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THE  INSPIRATION  OF  HISTORY 


By  the  Same  Author 

Christianity  in  the 
Daily  Conduct  of  Life 

i2mo,  $1.50 


THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  Publisher 

2  AND  3  Bible  House 

New  York 


J 

THE 


«H9 


Inspiration  of  History 


BY 


JAMES  MULCHAHEY,  S.T.D. 

Vicar-Emeritus  of  St.  Paul's  Chapel, 
Trinity  Parish,  N.  Y. 


New  York : 

THOMAS  WHITTAKER 

2  AND  3  Bible  House 
1896 


Copyright,  1896 

By  James  Mulchahey 


BURR  PRINTING  HOUSE,   NEW  VORK. 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  I.     Introductoiy  ;    The  Credibility  of 

History  .  .  .  .  .1 

Chapter  II.     The  Bible  a  Historical  Book      .     19 

Chapter  III.     The  Significance  of  the  Biblical 

History,  Simply  as  History    .  .  .33 

Chapter  IV.  The  Substantial  Truth  of  Biblical 
History,  not  Invalidated  by  "Higher  Criti- 
cism "  .  .  .  .  .  .43 

Chapter  V.  The  Inspiration  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment History .  .  .  .  .65 

Chapter  VI.     The  Witness  of  History  to  the 

Divine  Personality  of  Jesus  Christ    .  .     95 

Chapter  VII.  Conclusion  :  A  Living  Conscious- 
ness of  Communion  with  the  Living  God — 
the  God  of  Eighteousness  and  of  Love — the 
Present  Need  of  the  Church,  and  its  True 
Inspiration      .....  117 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF   HISTORY. 


THE  mSPIPiATION   OF   HISTORY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Introductory  : 

THE   CREDIBILITY    OF    HISTORY. 

History  is  in  our  time  emphatically  under  sus- 
picion. So  many  of  its  alleged  and  heretofore  uni- 
versally accredited  facts  have,  within  the  last  half 
century,  been  resolved  by  the  new  methods  of  his- 
torical criticism  into  fictions,  that,  in  the  popular 
mind,  there  is  a  general  disposition  to  question  its 
old  claim  to  trustworthiness. 

Indeed,  not  only  in  the  popular  mind,  but  even 
among  the  really  thoughtful  and  scholarly,  the  ques- 
tion is  seriously  raised  whether  the  credibility  to 
which  the  records  of  history  are  entitled  can  be 
accounted  scientific  in  any  true  sense  of  the  word. 

And  yet  the  old  foundation  ground  remains  firm. 
There  is  to  mankind  an  existence  in  the  past  as  sure 
as  in  the  present,  and  history  is  the  record  which 
that  past  has  made.     Fiction  and  history  are  a  con- 


2  THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  BISTORT. 

tradiction  in  terms.  History  has  no  business  with 
anything  but  fact,  and  its  legitimate  business  is 
nothing  else  but  to  keep  determined  facts  perma 
nently  known.  The  very  root-meaning  of  the  word 
is  to  know.  Its  essential  substance  is  fact-Jcnowl- 
edge.  Its  function  in  life  is  nothing  else  but  to  be 
perpetually  the  self-revelation,  the  monumental 
witness  of  fact. 

History  has  been  eloquently  declared  to  be  the 
memory  of  mankind,  and,  obviously,  in  the  life 
of  the  world  at  large  it  occupies  the  place  and  ful- 
fils the  function  which  memory  does  in  the  life  of 
each  individual  man.  Memory  is  a  blank  without 
fact,  and  fact  remembered  is  fact  known — res  acta^ 
fait  accompli — fact  identified  with  the  man's  own 
life  and  forming  a  constituent  element  in  his  very 
existence. 

It  does  not  follow  that  the  memory  of  any  one 
is,  or  is  supposed  to  be,  absolutely  infallible.  It  is, 
in  fact,  seldom  or  never  so.  In  every  one  it  is 
under  the  limitations  of  human  imperfection,  and 
so,  liable  to  inaccuracies  both  of  record  and  report. 
In  many  cases  it  has  no  hold  on  or  capability  of  re- 
taining circumstantial  details,  and  sometimes  its 
supposed  impressions  are  the  mere  hallucinations 
of  a  disordered  imagination.  But,  nevertheless, 
memory  is  to  every  one's  living  consciousness  the 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORY.  3 

only  witness  of  his  experience,  of  what  has  hap- 
pened to  him,  and  of  what  has  been  done,  said,  or 
thought  by  him  in  the  past ;  and  it  is  justly  ac- 
cepted and  trusted  as  such. 

The  reason  is  obvious.  Memory  is  nothing  else 
but  the  recorder  of  fact.  Whetlier,  in  strict  truth, 
itself  a  recorder,  or  simply  the  record — an  active 
faculty  or  impressionable  process — it  may  not  be 
easy  to  say  ;  but  the  essential  point  is  that  its  very 
existence  depends  on  fact.  Without  fact  there  is 
no  possibility  of  memory.  The  slightest  divergence 
from  impression  of  fact  in  the  mind  of  a  man  va- 
cates for  him  the  function  of  memory  and  puts 
imagination  in  its  place.  Therefore  when  a  man 
says,  "  I  remember,"  he  means  to  say  simply  that 
he  retains  the  impression  of  a  certain  event  or  deed 
in  his  past  life  ;  and  after  making  all  due  allow- 
ance for  human  imperfection,  if  he  is  sure  that  it 
is  Tnemory  which  now  quickens  his  consciousness 
to  a  perception  of  the  past  event  or  deed,  he  is  as 
sure  of  its  actual  occurrence  and  of  his  experience 
through  it  as  he  is  or  can  be  of  his  present  existence. 

Now  all  this  is  equally  true  of  history  in  the  gen- 
eral life  of  mankind.  It  may  be  conceded  at  once 
that  history  may  be  inaccurate  in  many  circumstan- 
tial details,  and  that  no  inconsiderable  part  of  its 
generally  accepted  records  is  absolutely   fictitious, 


4  THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORY. 

or  80  inaccurate  in  statement,  by  either  omission  or 
exaggeration,  as  to  be  utterly  untrustworthy  ;  but, 
nevertheless,  history,  on  the  whole,  is  trustworthy. 
It  depends  on  truth,  the  truth  of  fact,  for  its  very 
being.  Its  business  is  with  fact,  and  with  nothing 
else.  Without  fact — fact  that  has  actually  occurred 
— there  can  be  no  history.  The  slightest  divergence 
from  fact  in  any  pretended  record  puts  that  record 
80  far  out  of  the  category  of  history  and  relegates 
it  to  that  of  fiction  or  poetry. 

But,  it  may  be  said,  conceding  all  this  to  be  true 
of  history  in  the  abstract,  it  yet  determines  nothing 
for  practical  purpose  as  to  the  trustworthiness  of 
history  in  any  particular.  And  this  is  the  real 
difficulty  in  dealing  with  its  alleged  facts.  They 
come  to  us  in  detail,  and  we  have  to  examine  them 
separately,  one  by  one.  It  is  easy  enough  to  say 
that  they  are  not  history  if  they  be  not  true  ;  but 
our  definition  has  not  the  least  effect  toward  de- 
termining whether  they  are  true  or  not— the  very 
point  which  is  important  for  us  to  be  determined. 
Trust  in  history  is  of  little  consequence  if  the  trust 
be  only  in  an  abstraction.  What  we  want  for  prac- 
tical purpose  is  to  know  how  far  we  can  trust,  or 
whether  we  can  trust  at  all,  this  or  that  document 
or  allegation  which  comes  to  us  with  a  claim  to  be 
historical,  and  therefore  true. 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORY.  5 

Granting  this,  yet  something  is  gained,  surely, 
in  having  determined  at  the  outset  what  history 
itself  truly  and  properly  is.  We  know,  then,  on 
what  ground  we  stand  and  what  our  own  attitude 
upon  it  ought  to  be. 

But  is  it  quite  true,  or  rather  is  it  the  whole 
truth  to  say  that  the  records  of  history  are  to  be 
taken  by  us  in  separate  details,  and  the  truth  of 
them  determined  by  subjecting  them  to  examina- 
tion on  their  own  evidential  merit,  separately  and 
one  by  one  ?  No  doubt  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
it  is  true  to  say  that  history  is  made  up  of  docu- 
ments and  records  which  have  their  place  in  it  de- 
termined by  the  verifiable  credit  of  each  one  on  its 
own  merits  ;  true  also  that  its  reports  come  to  us 
in  details.  But  this  is  equally  true  of  memory. 
We  recollect  by  recalling  incidents  ;  and  our  re- 
membrance of  the  past  is  more  or  less  complete  and 
perfectly  accurate  just  in  proportion  to  the  inclu- 
sion in  our  memory,  or  failure  to  include,  its  every 
incident,  each  one  in  its  true  original  relation. 
But  confidence  in  onemory,  on  the  whole,  does  not 
depend  on  our  assurance  that  we  can  recall  every- 
thing that  has  occurred.  We  know  perfectly  well 
that  we  cannot — that  we  cannot  in  any  case  or  in 
relation  to  any  event,  much  less  in  relation  to  the 
past  as  a  whole.     Nevertheless  we  rightly  feel  that 


6  BE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORY. 

memory  is,  on  the  wlio]e,  trustworthy,  and  do 
actually  put  trust  in  it  ;  and  that  for  two  reasons  : 
First,  because,  as  already  stated,  we  know  that 
memory  has  no  other  function  than  to  be  the  record 
and  report  of  actual  facts,  and  also  because,  as  we 
now  add,  we  know  that  there  is  a  general  law  which 
combines  all  essential  facts  together,  and  so  fixes  in 
the  memory  a  true  impression  of  the  past  as  a 
whole,  without  necessarily  recalling  every  one  of 
its  incidents  in  separate  detail. 

Now  the  same  law  holds  in  general  history,  and 
the  same  conclusion  is  valid  in  justification  of  con- 
fidence in  its  trustworthiness.  Granted  that  events 
occurring  one  by  one  have  made  up  the  past  his- 
tory of  the  world  in  general,  as  of  the  life  of  every 
person  ;  granted  that  they  have  been  reported  sepa- 
rately, in  so  far  as  they  have  been  reported  at  all, 
and  may  therefore  be  so  recalled  ;  but  still  it  is  true 
to  say  that  no  one  of  them  occurred  separately  in 
such  sense  as  to  have  been  in  absolute  isolation. 
The  law  of  cause  and  effect  is  the  bond  of  contin- 
uous identity  in  all  life,  and  by  its  effective  bond 
every  historical  fact  is  connected,  directly  or  re- 
motely, with  every  other  fact.  Every  one  as  it 
occurs,  though  an  item  in  severalty,  is  yet  an  item 
in  combination,  always  necessarily  in  combination. 
And  it  is  the  co7nbination,  rather  than  the  separate 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  BISTORT.  7 

iteins^  which  makes  up  the  true  impression  of  past 
history.  We  rightly  conclude,  therefore,  that  his- 
tory is  trustworthily  credible  on  the  whole,  even 
though  its  records  are  allowed  to  be  incomplete  in 
many  particulars,  or  even  though  in  some  of  their 
details  they  are  found  to  be  false. 

But  in  the  study  of  history  the  object  unques- 
tionably is  to  get  a  correct  knowledge  of  the  deeds 
and  events  which  have  made  up  the  life  of  man- 
kind in  the  past ;  and  there  can  be  no  question  of 
the  practical  importance  of  determining  on  the  re- 
ports of  past  occurrences  which  have  come  to  us  as 
items  of  history,  whether  they  are  really  such  and 
therefore  entitled  to  our  acceptance  and  belief. 
For  this  purpose  they  may  properly,  and  indeed 
must  be  subjected  to  critical  examination  and  tested 
by  the  established  rules  of  evidence.  To  a  certain 
extent  they  may  and  must  be  examined  separately, 
and  each  one  tested  on  its  own  evidential  merits — 
only  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  the  point 
is  to  determine  whether  they  are  or  not  truly  items 
of  history.  If  so,  they  cannot  stand  alone,  cannot  be 
tested  in  isolation,  hwt  for  the  final  verdict  must  be 
considered  in  relation  to  other  occurrences  which  are 
known  to  have  happened,  and  which  in  their  combined 
capacity  make  up  the  chapter  of  history  in  which  the 
event  under  examination  is  alleged  to  have  occurred. 


8  THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORY. 

In  BO  far  as  records  of  deeds  and  events  in  the 
life  of  mankind,  which  have  come  to  us  as  history, 
can  be  verified  by  these  tests,  they  are  justly  en- 
titled to  be  accepted  as  such,  and  in  such  accept- 
ance are  as  justly  determined  to  be  credible.  The 
facts  alleged  are  then  determined  to  be  hnown  facts. 
Their  truth  is  demonstrated,  and  our  assurance  of 
their  occurrence  in  the  past  is  not  less  scientific  than 
is  our  assurance  of  facts  all  around  us  in  the  present. 

No  one  has  stated  this  general  law  of  historic 
credibility  more  succinctly  than  Mr.  Huxley.  In 
beginning  one  of  his  lectures  on  evolution,  he  says  : 
"  The  occurrence  of  historical  facts  is  said  to  be 
demonstrated  when  the  evidence  that  they  hap- 
pened is  of  such  a  character  as  to  render  the  as- 
sumption that  they  did  not  happen  in  the  highest 
degree  improbable."*  By  "the  evidence  that 
they  happened"  he  clearly  means,  not  the  isolated 
evidence  of  each  one  on  its  own  merits,  but  the 
evidence  in  combination  with  that  of  other  corre- 
lated facts,  the  combination  being  of  such  character 
as  to  hold  all  the  alleged  facts  in  legitimate  rela- 
tionship with  each  other,  and  so  finding  its  com- 
pleteness as  a  whole  only  in  their  legitimate  union. 
Wherever  such  union  is  traceably  determined,  he 

*  Science  and  Hebrew  Tradition,  p.  114. 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  BISTORT.  9 

justly  concludes  the  occurrence  of  the  historical  fact 
to  be  "  demonstrated." 

The  eloquent  Pere  Lacordaire,  in  one  of  his 
famous  Notre  Dame  conferences,*  has  drawn  out  a 
statement  of  the  principles  on  which  historic  cer- 
tainty is  grounded  at  much  greater  length.  Prefac- 
ing his  statement  with  the  definition  to  which  we 
have  before  referred,  of  history  as  "  the  memory 
of  mankind,"  he  propounds  three  conditions  which 
combine  to  make  history,  or,  more  properly,  as  he 
states  it,  historical  writing,  entirely  credible  and 
trustworthy. 

First.  ''  The  writing  must  he  public'^ — that  is, 
it  must  have  for  its  substantial  foundation  pubhc 
documents — documents  which  emanated  from  peo- 
ple living  at  a  time  in  the  past,  and  were  published 
and  circulated  among  that  people  at  the  time  or 
within  a  reasonable  period  of  the  time  when  the 
events  to  which  they  refer  were  in  actual  occur- 
rence. 

Secondly.  "  Writing  vjhich  claims  to  he  history 
must  hear  upon  jpuhlio  events ^ 

The  words  and  deeds  which  are  simply  those  of 
private  persons  in  their  individual  capacity  have, 
obviously,  no  place  in  history.     Many  of  the  words 

*  On  Jesus  Clirist,  pp.  174-189. 


10  TEE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HI8T0RY. 

and  deeds  even  of  public  personages  have  no  rela- 
tion to  public  affairs,  and,  however  interesting,  are 
to  be  regarded  simply  as  incidents  in  private  life, 
and  have  properly  no  place  in  general  history.  In 
very  clear  recognition  of  this  distinction,  Talleyrand 
is  said  to  have  replied  to  one  who,  bringing  to  him 
an  announcement  of  the  death  of  Napoleon  at  St. 
Helena,  spoke  of  it  as  ''  a  sad  event :"  "  That  is 
not  an  event;  it  is  simply  an  incident."  A  few 
years  earlier  it  would  have  been  an  event,  and  one 
of  great  historical  importance.  So  Lacordaire 
justly  declares  it  to  be  a  necessary  condition  of  his- 
torical certainty  that  we  should  "  separate  the  two 
elements,"  the  public  and  the  private,  "and  give 
to  the  former,  by  that  separation,  all  its  force  and 
all  its  lustre." 

"  The  third  condition  necessary  to  raise  writing 
to  the  state  of  history  is  that  the  events  should 
hlend  together  and  form  a  public  and  general  web. ' ' 

"  A  solitary  fact  is  not  a  historical  fact  ;  it  has 
no  real  place  ;  it  floats  in  air.  Still  much  less 
should  we  give  this  name  to  a  fact  which  cannot 
take  its  place  in  the  general  web  of  history  without 
deranging  its  whole  economy.  This  is  the  infalli- 
ble sign  of  imposture.  The  force  of  history,  like 
the  force  of  every  other  real  order,  is  in  its  com- 
pleteness and  unity.     When  a  man  stands  alone, 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  BISTORT.  11 

he  is  nothing  ;  when  a  fact  stands  alone,  it  is  noth- 
ing. But  let  a  man  enter  into  association  with 
others,  they  form  a  family,  a  people,  the  whole 
human  race.  And,  in  like  manner,  when  a  fact 
enters  into  historical  association  with  others,  and 
not  with  others  only,  but  with  all  the  rest  ;  let  it 
become  necessary  to  the  general  web  of  history,  so 
that  history  cannot  be  constructed  without  that 
fact — then  it  possesses  not  only  the  force  of  a  his- 
torical fact,  but  the  force  of  all  history  ;  then  we 
must  accept  it  or  deny  the  entire  life  of  the  human 
race." 

That  the  combination  of  these  three  conditions  in 
any,  case  furnishes  a  demonstration  of  its  occurrence 
as  a  historical  fact,  which  is,  in  a  true  sense,  scien- 
tific, seems  to  us  to  be  clear.  And  having  such 
demonstration  for  the  substantial  basis  of  belief, 
we  may  safely  and  reasonably  disregard  as  unworthy 
of  consideration  all  objections  against  it  which, 
however  plausible,  are  based  only  on  special  criti- 
cism either  of  the  inherent  improbability  of  the 
fact  or  the  insufficiency  of  particular  evidence  for  it. 

This  may  be  made  clear  by  one  or  two  illustra- 
tions, A  recent  writer  has  attempted,  by  such 
criticism,  to  controvert  the  accepted  record  of  the 
signing  of  Magna  Charta  by  King  John  at  Runny- 
mede  in  1215,  and  his  critical  notes  of  doubt  are  in 


12  THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORT. 

themselves  really  plausible.  But  it  is  a  sufficient 
reply  to  say  that  the  entire  course  of  subsequent 
English  history  depends  on  that  fact,  and  was  un- 
deniably determined  by  it.  An  event  which  might 
in  itself  have  belonged  only  to  the  annals  of  domes- 
tic life,  and  of  which  the  evidence  would,  in  that 
case,  have  been  no  stronger  than  such  as  is  cus- 
tomarily afforded  in  domestic  records,  is  referred  to 
by  Professor  G.  W.  Protheroy,  in  his  Edinburgh 
University  inaugural  address,*  as  an  illustration  of 
the  demonstrative  authentication  which  is  given 
even  to  such  a  fact  by  having  its  place  as  a  deter- 
mining factor  in  general  liistory.  The  event  re- 
ferred to  was  the  marriage  of  Henry  II.  of  England 
to  Eleanor  of  Aquitaine  in  the  Cathedral  of  Lisieux, 
in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1150.  "  That  marriage," 
as  he  says,  "gave  the  kings  of  England  a  great 
domain  in  France,  and  entailed  long  wars  between 
the  two  countries.  This  struggle,  lasting  through- 
out the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  was  the 
chief  cause  of  the  baronial  anarchy  which  culmi- 
nated in  the  wars  of  the  Roses.  The  Tudor  despo- 
tism was  the  outcome  of  those  wars,  and  in  trying 
to  maintain  that  despotism  the  Stuarts  lost  their 
throne.       The    revolution    which    overthrew    the 

Printed  in  National  Review,  December,  1894. 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTOBY.  13 

Stuarts  gave  supremacy  to  Parliament,  and  led 
directly  to  the  union.  Finally,  the  Parliament  of 
Great  Britain,  after  proving  its  capacity  by  creating 
the  British  Empire  and  defeating  Napoleon,  formed 
the  model  of  civil  government  throughout  the  civil- 
ized world.  And  so  we  may,  nay,  we  must,  treat 
any  great  historical  event,  until  the  ages  are  '  bound 
each  to  each  by  natural  piety.'  " 

One  more  illustration,  and  that  a  very  striking 
one,  may  be  given  from  our  own  American  history 
— viz.,  the  signing  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence by  the  members  of  the  Continental  Congress 
in  the  year  1776.  This  is  a  fact  which  was  wit- 
nessed in  the  deed  and  authenticated  in  the  publi- 
cation by  only  friendly  partisans,  and  arguments 
might  easily  be  found  by  captious  critics  to  show 
the  improbability  of  the  commonly  received  his- 
torical account  of  it,  and  to  raise  a  question  whether 
those  whose  names  are  now  found  attached  to  that 
instrument  are  really  entitled  to  the  honor  they 
have  received.  It  might  be  said  that  the  signing 
of  such  a  declaration,  at  the  time  it  is  alleged  to 
have  taken  place,  is  highly  improbable  because,  in 
the  first  place,  of  the  then  relative  strength  of  Eng- 
land and  America.  On  the  one  hand  there  was  an 
empire  second  in  all  the  elements  of  national  power 
to  none  other  on  earth,  while,  on  the  other  side, 


14  THE  CBEDIBILITT  OF  HISTORY, 

there  were  only  a  few  young  and  feeble  colonies. 
To  have  arrayed  these  colonies  in  opposition  to  such 
a  power  as  this  declaration  assumed  to  do,  could 
hardly  have  been  done  by  reasonable  men.  They 
must  have  seen  that  all  the  probabilities  were 
against  their  success  in  such  an  unequal  conflict  ; 
and,  for  themselves,  the  pledge  of  their  lives,  their 
fortunes,  and  sacred  honor  to  it  was  simply  suicidal, 
a  stake  so  desperate  under  the  circumstances  that  it 
could  not  have  been  made  without  a  degree  of  un- 
selfish heroism  which  is  more  than  human.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  forging  or  the  antedating  of 
documents  is  not  difficult  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
when  in  the  marvellous  course  of  events  the  United 
States  did  actually  become  independent,  there  were 
motives  strong  enough  to  have  induced  the  forging 
or  antedating  of  this,  since  nothing  could  be  more 
creditable  to  these  congressional  legislators  than  to 
have  anticipated  so  improbable  a  fact  by  so  heroic 
a  declaration. 

Now  all  such  criticism  is  certainly  very  absurd  ; 
but,  let  us  observe,  it  is  absurd  simply  because  we 
know  that  there  is  a  vast  amount  of  genuine  his- 
torical evidence  in  proof  of  the  fact,  sufficient  to 
render  it  absolutely  certain.  "We  know  that  not 
only  by  the  congressional  record  of  the  day,  but 
also  by  all  the  struggles  of  the  Revolutionary  War, 


THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  HISTORY.  15 

by  all  the  history  of  our  country  since,  and  by  its 
very  existence  as  a  nation  now,  this  fact  is  authenti- 
cated beyond  the  possibility  of  question  or  shadow 
of  reasonable  doubt. 

In  the  light  of  these  illustrations,  the  foregoing 
considerations  seem  clearly  to  warrant  the  following 
conclusions  : 

I.  History  has  a  substantial  basis  of  fact,  the 
truth  of  which  is  scientifically  determinable. 

II.  Its  trustworthy  credibility  is  not  invalidated 
by  discoveries  of  errors  in  special  details. 

III.  Historical  criticism,  to  be  of  any  value,  must 
take  into  account  not  only  the  special  evidence  of 
particular  incidents,  but  also  the  entire  body  of  evi- 
dence which  is  afforded  by  the  combination  of  these 
incidents  with  all  others  with  which  they  are  con- 
nected or  correlated. 


THE    BIBLE   A    HISTORICAL    BOOK. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   BIBLE   A   HISTORICAL   BOOK. 

It  has  long  ago  been  settled  in  the  consciousness 
of  Christendom  that  the  Bible  is,  in  the  truest  and 
most  proper  sense  of  the  word,  one  book.  Its  very 
title  by  which  it  has  come  to  be  universally  known, 
and  which  has  been  given  to  it  in  this  conscious- 
ness, indicates  the  recognition  of  it  not  only  as  a 
book,  but,  with  unique  emphasis,  as  the  Book. 

Very  clearly,  however,  its  unity  so  recognized  is 
something  different  from  that  which  we  commonly 
have  in  mind  when  we  speak  of  a  book.  It  is  not 
a  continuous  and  logically  connected  discussion  of 
one  topic  ;  it  is  not  one  as  a  treatise,  a  drama,  a 
poem,  or  a  history  ;  it  is  not  one  in  either  the  sub- 
ject-matter or  the  style  of  its  composition  ;  it  is  not 
the  work  of  one  author,  not  the  product  of  one 
age,  not  originally  issued  in  one  country,  or  written 
in  one  language — in  fact,  the  Bible  is,  as  we  all 
know  when  we  give  it  thought,  a  Book  of  many 
original  books,  sixty-six  in  all,  thirty-nine  of  the 
Old  Testament  and  twenty-seven  of  the  New. 
And  these  books  were  written  by  almost  as  many 


20  THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORtCAL  BOOK. 

different  authors,  in  different  countries — countries 
as  far  apart  from  each  other  and  as  different  in  the 
characteristics  of  their  civilization  as  Egypt  and 
Arabia,  Chaldea,  Assyria,  Judea,  and  Rome  ;  in 
different  ages,  ages  of  history  extending  over  a 
period  of  more  than  a  thousand  years. 

In  the  critical  investigation  of  historical  docu- 
ments, which  is  one  of  the  characteristic  specialties 
of  modern  scholarship,  the  real  historical  origin  of 
the  several  parts  of  the  Bible  has  received  and  is 
receiving  such  scrutiny  as  it  never  had  or  could 
have  had  before  ;  and  laying  great  stress  on  this 
diversity  of  authorship,  the  inference  is  drawn  that 
the  Bible  can  no  longer  be  regarded  as  essentially 
different  from  other  books,  at  least  not  from  such 
as  treat  specially  of  religious  history  and  doctrine. 

But  there  is  one  point  of  essential  difference 
between  the  Bible  and  all  other  books  or  class  of 
books  with  which  it  may  properly  be  compared, 
which  is  strangely  overlooked  and  left  entirely  out 
of  account  by  those  who  are  disposed  to  rest  in  this 
conclusion.  Suppose  we  should  collect  and  bind 
up  in  one  volume  the  literature — the  books  accred- 
ited as  the  classics — of  an  equal  number  of  countries 
in  other  parts  of  the  world  for  an  equally  long 
period  ;  or,  to  make  the  case  more  exactly  parallel, 
suppose  it  were  possible  to  trace  the  history  of  any 


THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK.  21 

other  ancient  race  of  inen  scattered  through  as  many 
successive  ages  among  other  peoples  in  as  many 
different  parts  of  the  world,  and  so  far  identified 
with  each  of  these  nations  as  to  participate  in  the 
diversified  characteristics  of  their  various  civiliza- 
tions ;  and  suppose  such  tracing  to  be  made  through 
documentary  evidences  written  at  different  periods 
in  one  country  and  another  ;  and  then  that  all  these 
documents  should  be  collected  and  bound  up  in  one 
volume — what  a  heterogeneous  book  we  should 
have  !  What  diversity,  without  possible  reconcilia- 
tion, in  its  contents  !  What  utterly  irreconcilable 
differences  of  thought  and  feeling  !  How  unlike  and 
altogether  out  of  harmony  with  each  other  the  views 
of  life,  the  representations  of  its  habitual  ways  and 
works,  the  theories  of  its  purpose  and  destiny  would 
be  presented  by  the  different  authors,  representing 
each  his  own  time,  people,  and  age  !  How  many 
different  and  disagreeing  religions  would  thus  be 
represented  !  how  many  and  varying  ceremonies 
and  modes  of  worship  !  how  many  gods  as  the  ob- 
jects of  worship,  with  attributed  characters  as  mul- 
tiplied and  conflicting  as  their  numerous  names  ! 
No  one  with  any  knowledge  of  history  would  ex- 
pect for  a  moment  the  possibility  of  any  more  har- 
monious result  if  he  should  attempt  to  bring  to- 
gether such  a  collection  of  the  documentary  repre- 


22  THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK. 

sentatives  of  the  different  stages  of  ancient  civiliza- 
tion for  so  long  a  period  as  fifteen  centuries  in  any 
part  of  the  world. 

But  when  we  turn  from  this  imagined  collection 
to  that  which  we  actually  have  in  the  Bible,  what 
do  we  find  ?  Marvellous,  and  except  on  one  expla- 
nation utterly  unaccountable,  the  fact  that  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  throughout  all  its  nearly  seventy 
separable  books,  with  their  original  diversities  of 
language,  scope,  purpose,  and  style,  there  is  a  suh- 
stantial  agreement,  an  accordant  harmony,  and  in 
some  important  particulars  an  absolute  identity  of 
hoth  practical  and  doctrinal  teaching. 

1.  First  of  all,  and  most  important,  there  is  this 
identity  of  doctrine  with  respect  to  the  Supreme 
Being,  the  Author  and  Sustainer  of  the  created 
universe,  unto  whom  all  religious  worship  and  ser- 
vice are  due  and  to  be  rendered.  "  Hear,  0  Israel, 
THE  LoKD  OUR  GoD  IS  ONE  LoKD."*  This  is  the  fun- 
damental proclamation  which  is  accepted  and  held 
with  faith  that  is  absolutely  identical  by  every 
writer  of  everj'  book,  and  never  lost  sight  of  or  de- 
parted from  on  any  page  or  in  any  word  of  the 
Bible,  from  beginning  to  end.  The  Bible  is  em- 
phatically, as  its  unique  distinction,  the  Book  of  God. 

*  Deut.  6  :  4. 


THE  BIBLE  A  EISTORIOAL  BOOK.  23 

Its  one  purpose  is  to  tell  of  Him  :  His  being,  na- 
ture, and  will.  In  tlie  consciousness  of  every  reader 
this  purpose  differentiates  it,  and  makes  it  stand 
apart  from  all  other  books  ;  and  no  matter  what 
the  special  object  of  any  one  of  its  particular  books, 
its  one  dominating  purpose  is  ever  felt  to  be  the 
revelation  of  God  and  of  His  supreme  dominion  in 
the  world  and  throughout  the  universe. 

2.  Then,  not  less  remarkable,  is  the  entire  agree- 
ment of  all  its  writers  in  declaring  God  to  hejper- 
fectly  righteous,  holy,  and  good.  From  Moses  to 
Isaiah  and  the  last  of  the  prophets  there  is  unani- 
mous agreement  that  there  can  be  no  shade  of  evil 
in  God,  that  from  everlasting  to  everlasting  He  is 
absolutely  perfect  in  goodness  as  in  power.  "  The 
Lord,  the  Lord,  a  God  full  of  compassion  and 
gracious,  slow  to  anger,  and  plenteous  in  mercy 
and  truth  ;  keeping  mercy  for  thousands,  forgiv- 
ing iniquity  and  transgression  and  sin,  and  that  will 
by  no  means  clear  the  guilty."*  "  Thus  saith  the 
high  and  lofty  One  that  inhabiteth  eternity,  whose 
name  is  Holy  :  I  dwell  in  the  high  and  holy  place, 
with  him  also  that  is  of  a  contrite  and  humble  spirit, 
to  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble,  and  to  revive 
the  heart  of  the  contrite  ones,"f     "I  will  come 

*  Ex.  34  :  6,  7.  f  Isa.  57  :  15. 


24  THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK 

near  to  you  to  judgment ;  and  I  will  be  a  swift  wit- 
ness against  the  sorcerers,  and  against  the  adulterers, 
and  against  false  swearers,  and  against  those  that 
oppress  the  hireling  in  his  wages,  the  widow,  and 
the  fatherless,  and  that  turn  aside  the  stranger 
from  his  right,  and  fear  not  me,  saith  the  Lord  of 
hosts.  For  I  the  Lord  change  not  ;  therefore  ye, 
O  sons  of  Jacob,  are  not  consumed."* 

It  is  not  possible  to  exaggerate  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  revelation  of  God,  which  is  given  in  such 
passages  (and  they  are  but  specimens  of  the  unani- 
mous teaching  of  the  Bible  throughout  in  both 
Testaments),  and  the  conceptions  of  the  character  of 
supernatural  beings,  whether  of  the  Supreme  Deitj'- 
or  of  His  subordinate  divinities,  which  is  found  in 
the  primitive  records  and  legends  of  all  other  an- 
cient peoples.  We  need  not  take  for  this  purpose 
the  grotesque  and  monstrous  viciousness  which 
filled  the  classic  Pantheon  with  unutterable  defile^ 
ment.  We  may  go  back  to  the  "  cleanest  and 
purest  record  of  theological  belief  in  all  antiquity" 
outside  of  the  Bible,  that  which  is  still  to  be  read 
on  the  monumental  stone  of  the  Moabites,  and  the 
fundamental  difference  in  conception  and  feeling 
relating  to  the  supernatural,  as  Professor  Sanday, 

*  Mai.  3  :  5,  6, 


THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK.  35 

whose  learning  and  candor  are  alike  unimpeachable, 
observes,  is  none  the  less  apparent.  The  most 
pious  of  the  Moabite  kings  coald  think,  in  the  des- 
perate extremity  of  defeat  in  a  final  struggle  for 
liberty,  of  no  surer  way  of  appeasing  the  ill-will  of 
his  god,  Chemosh,  than  to  take  his  oldest  son  that 
should  have  reigned  in  his  stead  and  offer  him  for  a 
burnt-offering  upon  the  city  wall.*  There  is  abun- 
dant evidence  that  among  the  Moabites  it  was  cus- 
tomary, as  a  religious  rite  with  its  abominable  ac- 
companiments and  merciless  consequences,  to  make 
their  sons  and  daughters  to  "  pass  through  the  fires 
to  Molech."  In  view  of  the  undeniable  fact  that 
in  all  the  ancient  ethnic  religions  there  are  sure  to 
be  found,  in  inseparable  connection  with  much  that 
is  ennobling,  both  ideas  and  practices  of  degrading 
superstition.  Professor  Sanday  well  remarks  that 
* '  the  great  problem  for  the  student  of  religions  is 
why  the  religion  of  Israel  alone  should  be  so  re- 
markably free  from  this  baser  mixture.  Why  was 
not  the  worship  of  Jehovah  like  the  worship  of 
Baal,  or  Tammuz,  or  Cybele,  or  Astarte,  or  Mylitta  ? 
Why  was  it  not  like  the  worship  of  a  race  so  nearly 
akin  to  Israel  as  the  Moabite  ?"t  No  solution  of 
this  problem  can  be  admitted  as  consistent  with  his- 

*  2  Kings  3  :  27.  f  Lectures  on  Inspiration,  p.  139. 


36  TEE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK. 

toric  truth  wliicli  does  not  take  into  account  the 
fact  that  the  religious  teachers  of  the  people  of 
Israel  constantly  and  invariably  taught  them,  as  no 
other  people  were  taught,  that  God  is  a  Being  of 
perfect  righteousness,  who  cannot  look  on  iniquity 
with  the  least  degree  of  allowance.* 

3.  Then  there  is  equal  agreement  concerning  the 
relation  of  God  to  us  His  creatures  and  our  conse- 
quent obligations  of  duty  toward  Him,  and,  in 
and  through  that  fundamental  obligation,  toward 
each  other  and  toward  all  created  beings.  In  the 
very  beginning  of  the  Mosaic  dispensation  it  was 
declared  not  less  plainly  than  by  the  Founder  of 
the  Christian  dispensation  fifteen  centuries  later, 
that  to  love  the  Lord  God  with  all  the  heart,  soul, 
mind,  and  strength,  is  the  first  and  greatest  com- 

*  The  preparation  of  Abraham  to  oflfer  up  his  son  Isaac, 
which  seems  at  first  view  to  be  a  parallel  case  with  that  of 
the  king  of  Moab,  was  not  so  in  truth.  It  is  recorded  as  a 
remarkable  and  entirely  exceptional  test  of  his  obedient  spirit ; 
was  not  allowed  to  be  consummated  ;  and  no  reader  of  the 
Bible  has  ever  supposed  it  to  be  consistent  with  the  Divine 
character  as  there  revealed  that  its  consummation  should  have 
been  allowed.  On  the  other  hand,  Mesha's  sacrifice  of  his 
son  was  clearly  prompted  by  the  Moabite  conception  of  relig- 
ious devotion  and  its  traditional  theory  of  such  sacrifice  as 
would  be  most  acceptable  to  his  god,  Chemosh,  and  therefore 
most  likely  to  secure  his  favor. 


THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK.  27 

mandment,  and  to  do  justice  and  love  mercy  to  all 
men,  even  thongh  they  be  only  strangers,  not  less 
required  by  the  Divine  will  and  in  conformity  to 
the  Divine  nature.*  And  the  ethics  summarily  in- 
culcated and  enjoined  in  the  Ten  Commandments 
are  adhered  to  without  the  slightest  divergence,  as 
constituting  the  fundamental  ethical  platform  of 
every  religious  teacher  in  every  stage  of  the  Bible 
history,  throughout  both  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
New. 

4.  In  equal  agreement  are  the  Biblical  writers,  so 
that  their  teachings  constitute  an  absolute  identity 
of  doctrine  concerning  the  origiti,  the  purpose,  and 
the  final  destiny  of  our  human  life ;  we  might 
even  say,  of  all  life  in  this  world  of  our  habitation 
and  of  the  'very  world  itself.  This  is  so  very  ob- 
vious and  unquestionable  that  we  need  only  to  make 
the  statement  without  comment  or  illustrative  ex- 
pansion. Every  reader  of  the  Bible  recognizes  at 
once  the  picture  which  it  draws,  and  from  which 
no  line  of  it  ever  varies,  of  life  in  this  world  as  a 
gift  of  Divine  creation,  of  its  educational  and  pro- 
bationary purpose,  and  of  its  final  destiny,  under 
the  laws  of  righteous  responsibility,  for  eternal  good 
or  ill. 

Such  unity  of  doctrinal  teaching  in  documents  of 
*  Deut.  10-33. 


28  THE  BIBLE  A  HISTORICAL  BOOK. 

such  diverse  and  widely-apart  origin  would  be 
utterly  incredible  did  we  not  know  it  to  be,  in  the 
documents  which  are  collected  as  one  book  in  the 
Bible,  the  unquestionable  fact. 

But  this  is  not  the  full  truth  on  this  point.  If 
the  Bible  were  a  formal  doctrinal  treatise,  or  even 
if  its  collected  books  were  a  collection  of  such 
treatises  by  different  authors  in  successively  differ- 
ent ages,  this  perfect  agreement  on  points  of  the 
most  important  and  fundamental  moment  would  be 
remarkable.  But  no  reader  feels  that  the  original 
production  of  it,  as  a  whole  or  of  its  separate  books, 
is  sufficiently  or  properly  accounted  for  by  attribut- 
ing it  or  them  to  such  intent  and  purpose.  There 
is  doctrinal  teaching  most  certainly,  and  that,  as  we 
have  seen,  of  the  highest  possible  importance  ; 
but,  essentially  and  throughout,  the  Bible  is  a  his- 
torical book.  Even  its  doctrinal  teachings  and  dis- 
cussions are  primarily  historical — that  is,  they  are 
products  of  actual  experience  rather  than  of  abstract 
thinking,  and  are  addressed  by  living  men  to  their 
fellow-men  for  helpful  guidance  in  daily  living. 
Equally  so  in  the  Old  Testament  as  in  the  New, 
and  in  the  varied  conditions  of  culture  through 
which  the  elect  people  were  led  in  the  ages  preced- 
ing the  time  of  Christ  and  His  apostles  not  less  than 
in  His  age  and  in  the  light  of  His  revelation.     The 


THE  BIBLE  A  HI8T0BIGAL  BOOK.  29 

agreement  throughout  is  not  only  in  abstract  doc- 
trine, but  in  doctrine  apphed,  doctrine  vitally  ex- 
emplified in  the  daily  practice  of  actual  life.  The 
unity  of  the  Bible,  then,  is  more  than  doctrinal 
unity  ;  there  is  also  in  it  a  unity  of  historical  move- 
ment, a  perfectly  consistent  evolution  from  begin- 
ning to  end.  Each  book  of  the  Bible  carries  on  the 
historical  movement  in  the  line  of  continuous  and 
legitimate  development  ;  so  that  in  reading  it  we 
are  conscious  of  a  steady  advancement,  and  have  a 
feeling  like  that  of  persons  who  are  ascending  to 
the  summit  of  some  great  mountain,  where  every 
step  is  an  uplift,  raising  them  into  a  region  the  air 
of  which  is  felt  to  be  purer  and  the  prospect  farther 
extended  and  more  comprehensive  of  beauty  and 
grandeur  than  before. 

And,  moreover,  there  is  throughout  a  consistent 
conception  of  this  perpetually  pervading  unity  ;  so 
that  there  is  wrought  in  every  reader's  mind  a  con- 
sciousness of  it  as  binding  the  ages  of  all  time  in 
one,  linking  each  to  each  and  moving  all  for  one 
grand  final  purpose,  from  the  beginning  of  creation 
to  the  end  of  time,  and  even  infinitely  farther,  from 
the  eternal  beginning  "  before  the  world  was" 
into  the  eternal  destinies  which  are  to  be  "  world 
without  end." 


THE 


SIGNIFICANCE     OF     THE     BIBLICAL 
HISTORY,  SIMPLY  AS   HISTORY. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   SIGNIFICANCE    OF   THE   BIBLICAL   HISTOKY,  SIMPLY 
AS    HISTOKY. 

The  unity  ol  tlie  Bible,  as  described  in  our  last 
chapter,  being  an  unquestionable  fact,  demands  ex- 
planation as  clearly  as  any  other  fact  in  life  or  his- 
tory. 

It  cannot  be  explained  by  a  supposition  of  inten- 
tional agreement  between  the  several  writers,  be- 
cause the  wide  intervals  both  of  distance  and  time 
between  the  writing  of  the  different  books  plainly 
preclude  the  possibility  of  personal  collusion.  It 
is  no  moje  explainable  by  the  theory  of  fraudulent 
composition  by  some  impostor  of  later  date,  for 
even  intelligent  sceptics  are  forced  to  admit  that 
this  theory  is  utterly  inconsistent  with  the  nature 
and  purpose,  the  intrinsic  character,  style,  and  even 
the  very  language  of  at  least  the  greater  part  of 
these  books. 

The  only  explanation  which  meets  all  the  facts  of 
the  case  is  that  the  hooks  of  the  Bible  were,  in  their 
origin,  outcomes  of  actual  history — that  is,  they 
are  true  documentary  expressions  of  such  history. 


34     TUE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  BIBLICAL  HISTOR  T. 

Just  as,  in  the  successive  strata  of  the  rocks  which 
incrust  our  globe,  the  scientific  student  finds  demon- 
strative evidence  of  successive  periods  in  the  evolu- 
tions of  the  earthly  creation,  even  so  the  severally 
successive  books  of  the  Bible  are  outcroppings,  as  it 
were,  of  stages  in  the  spiritual  creation  ;  demonstra- 
tive proofs  of  its  legitimate  progress  and,  through- 
out, of  its  entirely  consistent  unity  of  purpose  under 
the  hands  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  The  hooks  of  the 
Bible  could  not  have  heen  such  as  they  are,  nor  the 
Bible  as  a  whole  such  as  it  is,  except  as  a  produc- 
tion, in  the  order  of  the  real  development  or  succes- 
sive evolutio7is,  of  actual  historical  progress. 

This  may  be  made  clear  by  an  illustration.  Every 
one  knows  the  distinction  between  historical  and 
fictitious  literature — that  the  latter  has  no  basis  in 
fact,  but  only  in  the  imagination,  while  the  former 
rests  for  its  credibility  and  acceptance  on  its  con- 
formity to  fact  alone.  And  further,  as  already 
shown  in  the  first  chapter,  the  very  existence  of 
historical  literature  depends  on  preceding  history — 
that  is,  there  must  have  been  actual  historical  facts 
before  there  can  be  a  historical  record  of  them. 
This  is,  of  course,  true  not  only  of  records  that 
are  purely  historical,  but  also  of  every  department 
of  literature  in  which  facts  are  the  essential  basis. 
To  see  the  truth  of  this,  think  for  a  moment  of  the 


THE  SIGNIFIGANGE  OF  BIBLICAL  EI8T0B  Y.     35 

many  books  that  make  up  wliat  we  call  our  national 
literature,  and  it  is  at  once  evident  that  these  could 
not  be  in  existence  except  as  records  and  expres- 
sions of  our  national  life. 

For  further  and  fuller  illustration,  take  the  great 
body  of  our  modern  Christian  literature.  How  ex- 
tensive and  how  multiform  it  is  !  Histories  ;  biog- 
raphies ;  treatises,  philosophical  and  ethical ;  ser- 
mons and  meditations  ;  books  of  hymns  and  prayers, 
innumerable — every  one  an  outcome  of  Christian 
history,  and  all,  observe,  so  dependent  on  that  his- 
tory that  not  a  line  or  word  of  their  contents  could 
have  been  written  had  the  actual  history  not  have 
been,  or  had  it  been  other  than  it  was.  Take  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  with  the  literature  clus- 
tering around  it.  Nothing  more  certain  than  its 
existence  and  its  inestimably  prized  use  in  the 
church  services  of  our  time  ;  but  it  is  plain  to  see 
that  this  Prayer- Book  could  not  have  been  had  not 
the  Church  been  in  existence  before  it,  having  its  ser- 
vices of  prayer  and  praise  for  which  such  a  manual 
was  needed.  And  hence  we  can  see  that  if  it  were 
possible  that,  by  some  disastrous  revolution,  our 
present  civilization  with  all  its  institutions  could  be 
entirely  overthrown  and  swept  away  ;  and  if  in  this 
dire  catastrophe  the  Church  could  be  utterly  de- 
stroyed ;  and  if  a  new  civilization  should  rise  upon 


36    THE  SIONIFIGANCE  OF  BIBLICAL  EI8T0B  T. 

the  ruins  and  continue  for  a  thousand  years  or  more 
without  the  least  trace  in  it  of  such  an  institution 
as  the  Church  ;  and  if,  then,  by  some  antiquary 
delving  in  the  ruins  of  past  ages,  there  should  hap- 
pen to  be  found  a  copy  of  this  old  and  long-forgot- 
ten Prayer-Book — why,  even  then  and  under  cir- 
cumstances so  little  favorable  to  the  conclusion,  the 
very  book  itself  would  be  proof  that  it  once  had  a 
purpose,  and  its  contents  would  show  that  this  pur- 
pose must  have  been  the  worship  of  such  a  Being 
as  God — Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost — by  con- 
gregations statedly  assembling  in  His  name.  The 
conclusion  then  would  be  irresistible  that  there 
must  have  been  once  living  such  a  body  of  believ- 
ing worshippers  ;  that,  in  other  words,  such  an  in- 
stitution as  the  Christian  Church  must  have  had  its 
place  in  the  actual  history  of  the  world.  The  book 
would  be  the  palpable,  demonstrative  proof  of  the 
fact. 

Now  take,  in  the  hght  of  this  illustration,  our 
possession  and  knowledge  of  the  Bible.  There  has 
been,  thank  God,  no  destructive  catastrophe  to 
wipe  out  of  our  remembrance  the  history  of  the 
past  ;  the  Book  has  never  been  lost,  but  has  ever 
been  kept  sacredly  in  its  recognized  place  of  direc- 
tive authority  in  every  stage  of  a  steadily  advancing 
historical  progress.      Therefore  there  is,   for  a  de- 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  BIBLICAL  HISTOB  7.    37 

ductive  conclusion,  an  incomparable  advantage  over 
the  case  of  the  Prayer-Book  as  supposed  ;  but  with 
this  advantage  let  the  illustration  be  applied,  and 
who  can  fail  to  see  the  pertinence  and  the  force  of 
it  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  ?  We  have  the 
Bible,  this  collection  of  books,  in  our  hands.  Its 
contents  throughout  show  it  to  be,  as  its  title  im- 
plies, the  Book  of  books.  The  first  and  oldest  part 
of  it  is,  on  its  face,  a  collection  of  historical  records 
relating  to  a  people  who  were,  or  at  least  supposed 
themselves  to  have  been,  specially  selected  by  the 
Divine  Creator  of  the  world  to  be,  above  all  other 
people,  recipients  of  special  revelations  of  His 
righteous  will  and  government.  This  part  of  the 
Bible  is  neither  a  poem,  like  the  "  Iliad,"  nor  an 
ideal  creation,  like  Plato's  "Kepublic, "  nor  a  fic- 
titious tale,  like  a  modern  novel.  It  is  plain  his- 
tory, and  that,  not  merely  as  historical  narrative, 
but  very  much  more — it  is  the  essential  embodi- 
ment of  history.  It  is  not  only  the  story,  but  it  is 
the  charter  of  the  nation.  It  includes  its  constitu- 
tion and  its  fundamental  laws.  It  is  the  body  of 
its  authorized  records  ;  the  legislation,  for  both  pres- 
ervation and  permanent  example,  of  its  founders, 
of  their  principles  and  acts,  and  of  the  institutions, 
both  political  and  ecclesiastical,  which  the  nation 
had  by  inheritance  from  them. 


38    THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  BIBLICAL  HISTOR  Y. 

Passing  on  from  this  part  of  the  Bible,  we  have, 
next,  historical  records  of  this  people  under  the  gov- 
ernment of  kings  and  priests,  in  the  line  of  direct 
and  legitimate  historical  development.  These 
books,  too,  are  such  in  their  very  nature  as  to  be 
demonstrative  of  the  actual  existence  of  such  a 
people. 

If  any  explanation  short  of  this  could  account  for 
the  existence  of  these  portions  of  the  Bible  which 
are  purely  historical  in  purpose,  no  shade  of  doubt 
can  be  left  when  we  take  into  account  the  later 
books,  the  Psalms  and  the  Prophecies.  These  are 
the  unquestionable  formularies  of  real  devotion  and 
the  sermons  of  real  preachers.  The  books  them- 
selves are  all-sufficient  evidence  that  there  was  a 
people  who  worshipped  the  God  of  their  fathers 
after  this  manner,  and  to  whom  the  rule  of  His 
commandments  was  the  acknowledged  law  of  right- 
eousness. 

The  conclusion  is  even  more  decisively  demon- 
strated in  the  New  Testament.  Here  we  have  the 
most  conclusive  possible  notes  of  the  existence  of 
such  a  people,  with  a  constitntion  and  habits  of  life 
which  clearly  mark  them  as  lineal  descendants  of 
the  people  who  lived  under  the  Old  Testament  dis- 
pensation. Then,  in  the  recorded  birth  of  the  Sav- 
iour, Jesus  Christ,  there  is  indeed  a  new  and  most 


THE  SIONIFIGANCE  OF  BIBLICAL  BISTORT,    39 

wonderful  development,  but  it  is  a  development  per- 
fectly legitimate  and  entirely  consistent  with  all  the 
past  history.  His  very  lineage  is  traced  carefully 
in  the  line  of  the  house  of  David,  and  all  His  pecul- 
iar characteristics — all  that  marked  Him  as  a  per- 
sonage of  unique  nature  and  life — are  scarcely  more 
remarkable  in  themselves  than  in  their  accordance 
with  the  final  purpose,  in  them  made  apparent,  of 
all  the  past.  The  Mosaic  history,  with  all  its 
divinely  ordained  laws  and  institutions  ;  the  devo- 
tional cultus  of  the  Psalms  ;  the  marvellous  predic- 
tions and  glorious  promises  of  the  prophets — all 
plainly  and  unmistakably  culminate  and  have  their 
perfect  fulfilment  in  Him.  And  though  it  is  true, 
as  even  sceptical  candor  has  been  constrained  to 
acknowledge,  that  the  consistent  delineation  of  such 
a  Personage  by  such  writers  as  the  four  evangelists 
would  be  a  greater  miracle  than  any  mighty  thing 
which  they  have  recorded  of  Him,  and  so  the  Gos- 
pels themselves  are  the  most  credibly  veritable  of  all 
history  ;  yet,  as  if  to  seal  the  testimony  beyond  a 
possibility  of  reasonable  question,  the  New  Testa- 
ment canon  is  not  closed  until  the  new  life  has  its 
consistent  development  in  a  new  order,  in  which  we 
have  the  germs,  both  doctrinal  and  institutional,  of 
all  Christian  civilization,  the  primary  examples  of  all 
that  is  best  and  truest  in  the  world's  history  ever  since. 


THE 

SUBSTANTIAL    TRUTH    OF    BIBLICAL 

HISTORY   NOT   INVALIDATED   BY 

"HIGHER   CRITICISM." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    SUBSTANTIAL    TRUTH    OF    BIBLICAL    HISTORY    NOT 
INVALIDATED  BY  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM." 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  indisputably  true 
that  historical  criticism  may  properly  claim  the 
right  to  treat  the  Bible  as  it  does  all  other  books. 
The  books  of  the  Bible  are  historical  productions. 
They  were  severally  written,  at  different  dates,  by 
human  authors  in  the  normal  exercise  of  human  in- 
telligence and  thought.  As  so  written  they  may 
and  must  be  tested  by  the  established  rules  of  his- 
torical criticism,  and  there  can  be  no  valid  objec- 
tion to  the  rigid  application  of  these  rules  for  the 
determination  of  questions  relating  to  the  genuine- 
ness, the  authenticity,  or  the  general  credibility  of 
any  scriptural  book,  or  of  the  Bible  as  a  whole. 

Only,  it  would  seem  to  be  too  clear  for  argument 
that  a  degree  of  reverence  is  due  to  the  position  of 
sacred  authority  which  has  been  accorded  to  the 
Bible  in  all  its  parts  for  many  ages,  and  that  criti- 
cism should  be  scrupulously  cautious  in  alleging 
mistakes  or  proposing  corrections  in  it.  It  is  not 
to  hQ  presumed  that  the  canon  of  inspired  Scripture, 


44  BIBLICAL  HIS  TORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM." 

either  in  the  Jewish  or  Christian  dispensation,  was 
made  up  arbitrarily,  carelessly,  or  ignorantly. 
Much  less  is  it  to  be  presumed  that  the  recognition 
of  a  unique  quality  of  Divine  inspiration,  which 
was  the  determining  factor  in  the  original  forma- 
tion of  the  canon,  and  which  has  had  the  assured 
assent  of  men — the  wisest  and  best,  the  purest, 
most  thoughtful  and  intelligent  almost  without 
exception,  of  the  most  civilized — indeed,  the  only 
really  civilized — peoples  of  the  world  for  twenty 
centuries  :  it  is  not,  we  say,  to  be  presiwied  that 
such  recognition  has  been  nothing  better  than  a 
blunder  of  superstition.  The  only  presumption  in 
the  case  is,  surely,  that  which  takes  in  and  duly 
accounts  for  all  the  facts  in  the  history  as  well  as 
the  character  of  the  Bible,  and  gives  due  weight  to 
all  the  considerations  which  have  so  long  combined 
to  sanction  its  authority  as  settled  in  sound  reason 
not  less  than  in  faith. 

In  80  far  as  the  "higher  criticism"  of  our  time 
is  open  to  the  charge  of  a  predisposition  to  disre- 
gard, and  even  to  treat  with  supercilious  contempt, 
all  such  considerations,  it  is  not  only,  as  it  seems 
quite  willing  to  be,  offensive  to  Christian  reverence, 
but  untrue  to  its  own  principles  as  well  ;  since  it  is 
certain  that  genuine  historical  scholarship  demands  an 
impartial  recognition  of  all  the  factors  that  have 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM."  45 

combined  to  make  up  and  determine  any  historical 
movement  which  may  be  under  its  survey. 

The  present  writer  is  quite  content  to  leave  to 
competent  scholarship  the  settlement  of  all  ques- 
tions which  are  raised  in  its  own  lines  of  investiga- 
tion, and  has  not  the  least  fear  that  any  article  of 
religious  faith  which  is  worth  conserving  will  be 
more  than  temporarily  disturbed  by  thoroughly  in- 
formed intelligence.  But  there  are  certain  assump- 
tions just  now  current  under  the  endorsement  of 
"  higher  criticism"  which  are  so  evidently  pre- 
judgments of  determined  scepticism,  that  they 
should  be  labelled  as  such  at  once. 

1.  The  first  of  these  is  the  theory  which  boldly 
demands  the  displacement  of  the  Biblical  account 
of  the  Mosaic  economy  from  its  ages-long  com- 
manding position  in  history,  and  relegates  the  en- 
tire record  of  the  Divine  legation  of  Moses  to  the 
realm  of  the  purely  legendary. 

The  first  argument  on  which  this  theory  is  based 
— viz.,  the  assumed  ignorance  of  loriting  on  the 
part  of  Moses  and  his  contemporaries  and  the  con- 
sequent non-existence  of  written  historical  docu- 
ments of  any  kind,  or  of  any  kind  of  literature  in 
his  day  and  long  after — has  been  conclusively  dis- 
proved by  Professor  Sayce  in  his  recent  book  on 
the   "  Higher  Criticism  and  the  Monuments,"  in 


46  BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISMS 

which  he  gives  indisputable  proof  that  long  before 
the  time  of  Moses  there  was  in  extensive  and  even 
popular  circulation  throughout  the  whole  region 
between  Babylonia  and  Egypt  a  body  of  literature, 
written  on  tablets  of  imperishable  clay,  and  that 
for  the  safe-keeping  of  such  tablets  many  noted 
libraries  were  in  existence. 

A  second  argument  would  be  inconclusive,  even 
if  its  premise  were  granted — viz.,  that  there  is  no 
evidence  of  the  observance  of  the  Mosaic  institu- 
tions among  the  ancient  Israelites  for  a  long  period 
— four  or  five  centuries  at  least — after  the  time  of 
Moses  ;  but  the  premise  is  not  granted.  The  ex- 
treme meagreness  of  the  records  of  the  chosen  peo- 
ple's history  through  all  that  long  period  must  be 
taken  into  account,  and  no  one  can  consider  im- 
partially the  evidences  of  the  existence,  and  of  rec- 
ognition by  the  people,  of  Mosaic  institutions,  which 
are  found  even  in  those  records,  as  shown  especially 
by  Dr.  Watts  and  Professor  Bissell,  without  feeling 
that  the  assumption  of  their  non-existence  is  de- 
cidedly unwarrantable. 

The  assumption  extends  almost  as  sweepingly 
over  four  or  five  centuries  more — even  to  the  time 
of  Josiah — by  unqualifiedly  pronouncing  the  books 
of  Chronicles  to  have  been  worked  up  by  a  priestly 
party  during  the  exile,  and  attributing  to  the  pre- 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIOHER  CRITICISM."  47 

exilic  prophets  ignorance  of  the  entire  Levitical 
system  and  opposition  to  the  spirit  of  its  require- 
ments. The  theory  is  maintained  here  by  simply 
throwing  all  the  positive  evidence  against  it  bodily 
out  of  court,  and  it  is  in  manifest  contradiction  to 
facts  which  it  is  compelled  to  admit  as  historically 
authenticated.  For  instance,  there  is  no  question 
that  the  Samaritans,  in  their  alienated  state  after  the 
exile,  accepted  the  entire  Pentateuch  with  venera- 
tion for  its  antiquity  and  Divine  authority  equal  to 
that  of  their  brethren  in  Judea.  If,  as  this  new 
theory  claims,  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy  only  had 
been  known  before  the  exile,  and  that  only  under 
a  doubtful  claim  of  having  been  found  by  a  priest 
in  the  time  of  Josiah,  after  having  been  lost  for 
centuries,  how  is  it  possible  to  account  for  the  ex- 
istence of  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch,  or  to  explain 
the  Samaritans'  acceptance  of  it  and  their  adhesion 
to  belief  in  its  Mosaic  authorship  and  Divine  au- 
thority ?  Again,  it  is  agreed  by  all  competent 
scholars  that  the  language  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  of 
Joshua  as  well,  is  not  that  of  the  exilic  period,  but 
archaic,  and  unquestionably  classic  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment history.  Yet,  again,  the  theory  depends 
chiefly  on  the  silence  of  the  older  Biblical  records 
concerning  any  general  or  uniform  observance  of 
the  Mosaic  institutions  in  the  pre-Davidic  ages,  and 


48  BIBLICAL  niSTORY  ANB  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM." 

even  for  tlie  subsequent  centuries  before  tbe  exile. 
That  point  has  been  already  referred  to.  But  if  the 
Levitical  system  was  devised  at  the  time  and  for 
the  purpose  Nvhich  this  theory  alleges,  is  it  possible 
to  account  for  its  character  or  for  some  of  its  lead- 
ing provisions  any  more  than  for  its  language  ? 
The  provisions  for  the  temple-worship  and  sacrifices 
may  be  so  explainable  ;  but  what  can  be  said  of  the 
elaborate  provisions  for  the  years  of  Sabbatical  rest 
and  the  general  readjustment  of  property  owner- 
ship and  new  divisions  of  the  land  in  the  semi-cen- 
tennial jubilees  ?  "  There  is  no  evidence  that  these 
enactments  ever  went  into  practical  effect." 
Granted  as  certainly  true  not  only  in  the  pre-exilic 
ages,  but  equally  so  in  the  subsequent  period  ;  but 
the  point  is,  and  it  is  strengthened  rather  than  weak- 
ened by  this  fact,  is  there  any  possible  way  to  ac- 
count for  its  invention  by  the  priests  while  in  exile  ? 
As  an  old  provision  in  one  of  the  Mosaic  books  it 
may  be  accounted  for,  even  though  there  were  no 
record  of  its  consistent  observance,  or  even  though 
its  provisions  had  been  for  the  most  part  allowed  to 
lapse  into  desuetude.  But  what  conceivable  motive 
could  have  prompted  the  priests  in  exile  to  put 
forth  a  claim  for  the  ancient  existence  and  Divine 
authorship  of  such  a  system  ?  Why  should  they 
have  devised  it  ?     What  could  have  suggested  its 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHEB  CRITICISM."  49 

provisions  to  tliem  ?  For  what  purpose  and  with 
what  possible  reason  could  they  have  thought  of 
inducing  their  countrymen  to  adopt  it  on  their  re- 
turn to  the  Holy  Laud  ?  These  and  such  questions 
are  not  to  be  superciliously  put  aside.  They  must 
be  met  and  satisfactorily  answered  before  the  Bibli- 
cal history  can  be  rewritten  on  the  modern  theory, 
and  before  the  pretensions  of  this  theory  to  scien- 
tific historical  scholarship  can  be  accepted  as  any- 
thing better  than  an  unwarrantable  assumption. 

II.  While  it  is  conceded  even  by  the  advanced 
school  of  sceptical  critics  that  from  the  time  of 
King  David — about  a  thousand  years  before  the 
Christian  era — the  Jewish  people  may  be  properly 
included  within  the  scope  of  scientific  history,  it  is 
claimed  that  the  character  of  David  has  been  so 
completely  reversed  in  the  traditional  idea  of  him 
as  to  require  the  jentire  history  to  be  rewritten. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  state  that  the  traditional 
ideal  is  that  of  a  man  not  without  faults,  not  free 
from  at  least  one  very  heinous  sin,  but  of  excep- 
tional devoutness  and  spirituality  of  temper  ;  that 
as  such  he  was  recognized  in  his  day  as  "  a  man 
after  God's  own  heart  ;"  was  chosen  to  be  the 
founder  of  the  elect  dynasty,  the  lineal  progenitor 
of  the  Incarnate  Messiah  ;  was  also  inspired  to  be 
the  author  of  many  of  the  Psalms,  and  justly  en 


50  BIBLICAL  HISTORT  AND  "  HIOEER  CRITICISM." 

titled  by  his  devout  interest  in  the  services  of  the 
sanctuary,  as  well  as  his  musical  skill  and  poetic 
inspiration,  to  be  named  the  "sweet  psalmist  of 
Israel,"  and  to  have  the  entire  collection  of  the 
Psalms  published  under  his  name.  This,  in  brief, 
is  the  ideal  of  David  and  of  his  position  in  the  Bible 
history,  which  has  been  traditionally  accepted  in  all 
Christendom  for  nearly  two  thousand  years,  and  in 
Judaism  for  a  thousand  years  before  its  birth. 

Now  it  is  proposed  by  such  claimants  to  superior 
historical  knowledge  and  critical  insight  as  Renan, 
in  France,  Wellhausen,  in  Germany,  and  Kuenen 
and  his  reverend  (!)  followers,  Drs.  Oortand  Hook- 
yos,  in  Holland,  to  dethrone  this  ideal,  and  to  put 
in  its  place  the  image  of  a  character  so  utterly 
diverse  from  it  as  to  be  its  entire  opposite  in  all 
moral  and  spiritual  traits.  David,  as  here  por- 
trayed, so  far  from  being  eminently  spiritually 
minded,  was  the  "  least  religious"  of  all  the  Jew- 
ish leaders  or  rulers  ;  so  far  from  being  remarkable 
for  his  allegiance  and  devotion  to  Jehovah,  was 
careless  of  all  worship  and  ready  to  acknowledge 
for  a  purpose  either  Jehovah  or  Baal  with  equal 
indifference  ;  so  far  from  having  been  an  inspired 
Psalmist,  he  was  simply  a  jovial  minstrel  who  could 
sing  a  good  song  of  love  or  war  ;  and  so  far  from 
having  been  the  author  of  most  of  the  Psalms,  it  is 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM."  51 

doubtful  if  he  wrote  or  tliouojlit  of  writing  even 
one  of  them.  In  his  personal  life  he  was,  after  his 
boyhood,  of  which  nothing  is  known,  first  a  dash- 
ing adveuturer ;  then  a  reckless  brigand  chief- 
tain ;  and,  finally,  a  brilliant  soldier  and  triumphant 
king,  as  jovial  as  he  was  successful,  and  witliout 
conscience  in  the  commission  of  the  meanest  treach- 
eries or  the  most  flagrant  crimes.  These  are  the 
dark  lines  in  which  the  portrait  of  David  is  drawn 
by  the  writers  referred  to,  and  with  which  the  later 
history  of  the  Old  Testament  dispensation  is  pro- 
posed to  be  colored  and  so  entirely  rewritten. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  for 
a  true  estimation  of  both  the  character  and  relations 
of  David  there  is  no  other  source  of  knowledge 
than  the  Bible  itself  ;  and  therefore  the  eminent 
general  knowledge  of  such  writers  gives  them  no 
advantage  over  thosp  whose  study  and  thought  have 
been  restricted  to  the  sacred  history  alone. 

In  the  second  place,  it  must  be  conceded  that  the 
traditionary  ideal  of  David  originated,  not  in  the 
Biblical  narrative^  but  in  the  actual  life  of  which 
that  narrative  is  but  a  record.  So  all  historical 
ideals  are  formed.  A  man  can  become  an  historical 
personage  only  by  having  made  his  place  in  the  his- 
torical movement  of  his  nation  and  age,  so  as  to  be 
identified  with  it  or  with  some  phase  of  it.     He  is 


52  BIBLICAL  UISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM." 

thus  in  the  public  eye,  and  subject  to  the  popular 
judgment.  That  judgment  is  never  wrong,  at  least 
not  in  the  main  and  on  the  whole.  Therefore  the 
recorded  history,  which  is  its  photograph,  may 
always  be  relied  upon  for  indisputable  accuracy,  if 
not  in  every  detail,  yet  at  least  in  all  that  consti- 
tutes substantial  truth.  The  ideal  of  David  is  trace- 
able to  the  same  kind  of  root,  and  has  attained  its 
growth  by  precisely  the  same  process  and  on  pre- 
cisely the  same  principles  that  have  characterized 
that  of  all  other  prominent  personages  in  history. 
To  say  that  the  true  ideal  of  David  is  the  complete 
reverse  of  what  it  has  been  hitherto  supposed  to  be 
is  as  preposterous  as  it  would  be  to  say  that  Charle- 
magne was  a  cowardly  imbecile,  Charles  II.  a  saint, 
or  Washington  the  counterpart  of  Nero. 

But  the  challenge  having  been  so  confidently  put 
to  the  defenders  of  the  traditionary  ideal,  there  is  a 
call  for  a  reconsideration  of  the  Old  Testament 
admissions  of  faultiness  in  its  favorite  heroes,  and 
particularly  of  faults  in  the  character  of  David,  to 
obviate  an  unjust  impression  of  their  true  character 
and  effect. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  the  observation  which 
has  been  often  made  should  be  marked  with  new 
emphasis — viz.,  that  while  the  Bible  relates,  without 
the  least  attempt  at  apology  or  extenuation,  even 


BIBLICAL  UISTOBT  AND  "  HIGEEB  CBITICISM."  53 

the  worst  faults  of  those  whom  in  the  main  it  most 
commends,  it  never  commeiids  the  faults  /  but,  on 
the  contrary,  holds  them  up  for  the  warning  and 
admonition  of  its  readers,  and  generally  describes 
the  punishment  or  the  penitence  which  followed 
them. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  clearly  right  that  allow- 
ance should  be  made  for  the  primitive  age  and  dim 
ethical  light  in  which  the  Old  Testament  heroes 
lived.  The  Old  Testament  history  begins  in  the 
earliest,  most  primitive,  and  rudest  age  of  the 
world  ;  and  it  was  in  such  an  age,  or  not  very  far 
advanced  above  it,  that  the  persons  lived  in  whose 
records  we  find  serious  moral  blurs.  In  the  days 
of  Noah,  of  Abraham,  of  Lot,  and  of  Jacob  there 
had  been  no  authoritative  proclamation  of  the 
Divine  law  ;  the  voice  of  Jehovah  had  not  been 
heard  declaring  in  tones  of  thunder  the  moral  obliga- 
tions of  men.  Doubtless,  as  all  Christian  believers 
hold,  His  good  Spirit  instructed  them  by  His  still, 
small  voice,  and  to  His  instruction  in  their  hearts, 
opening  them  to  receive  and  enabling  them  to 
understand  the  few  truths  which  had  been  tested  in 
life  or  handed  down  as  relics  of  primeval  knowl- 
edge, they  must  have  been  indebted  for  all  their 
conceptions  of  righteousness  ;  but  it  is  obvious  that 
knowledge  in   its  crude  elements,  and  with  very 


54  BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM." 

little  discrimination  of  principles,  was  all  that  under 
such  circumstances  they  could  have  attained. 

The  age  of  David  and  Solomon  was  later,  an  age 
of  much  clearer  light  and  higher  privilege  ;  but 
the  lines  of  moral  discrimination,  even  in  that  age, 
were  but  dimly  discerned.  It  was  neither  night 
nor  day.  The  darkness  of  pagan  barbarism  had 
been  dispelled,  but  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  had 
not  yet  dawned  in  His  bright  effulgence  upon  the 
world.  The  men  of  that  generation  had  before 
them  the  tables  of  the  Law,  but  they  had  not  the 
spotless  example  or  the  perfect  teachings  of  Christ. 
Superior,  then,  as  their  knowledge  undoubtedly  was 
to  that  of  the  ancient  patriarchs,  it  was,  as  un- 
doubtedly, vastly  inferior  to  that  of  the  humblest 
child  of  God  in  the  Church  now.  The  Lord  Him- 
self implicitly  affirms  this  when  He  says  that  John 
the  Baptist  was  greater  than  any  of  the  prophets 
before  him,  and  yet  that  the  least  in  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  greater  than  he. 

If  we  would  estimate  rightly  the  character  of 
God's  ancient  servants,  we  must  bear  this  fact  in 
mind,  and  make  due  allowance  for  it.  The  wonder 
then,  perhaps,  may  be  not  that  there  were  notable 
defects  in  them,  but  rather  that  they  were,  for  the 
most  part,  so  free  from  defect  ;  that  when  so  little 
light  seemed  to  be  vouchsafed  for  the  illumination 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM:'  55 

of  their  path,  tliej  should  have  walked  in  it,  on 
the  whole,  so  uprightly,  with  so  little  of  stumbling 
or  turning  aside. 

Besides  this  consideration,  there  is  another  which 
is  very  important,  to  be  borne  in  mind — viz.,  the 
essential  difference  hetween  the  inspired  hiograjphies 
and  others  for  which  special  inspiration  is  not 
claimed.  The  difference  is  this  :  Uninspired  biog- 
raphies describe  only  the  actions  of  their  subjects, 
and  ascribe  those  actions  to  the  best  motives  which  a 
favorable  judgment  suggests  ;  but  the  inspired 
biographies  lay  bare  the  most  secret  thoughts  and 
intents  of  the  heart,  and  thus  show  what  the  motives 
in  every  case  really  were.  The  former  represent 
their  subjects  as  they  appeared  in  the  sight  of  their 
fellow-men,  but  the  latter  represent  their  subjects 
as  they  appeared  in  the  sight  of  God. 

Now  we  do  not  hesitate  to  confess  our  belief  that 
there  is  no  man,  and  that  from  the  beginning  of 
human  history  there  never  has  been  one,  in  whose 
life  the  Eye  of  Omniscience,  taking  in  at  one  glance 
its  whole  extent  and  noting  its  every  act,  does  not 
see  stains  of  guilt  as  dark  as  any  which  lies  upon 
the  character  of  even  the  most  faulty  of  God's  an- 
cient servants.  "Who  can  look  honestly  into  his 
own  heart  and  fail  to  discover  astounding  depths 
of  iniquity  there  ?     What  foul  thoughts  lurk  in  its 


56  BIBLICAL  HISTORY xiND  '' HIOIIER  CRITICISM." 

dark  caverns  and  rise  up  when  opportunity  prompts 
to  assert  their  dominating  power — thoughts  full  of 
all  uncleanness  and  maliciousness,  fornication,  adul- 
tery, wrath,  revenge,  murder  ;  are  they  not  all 
there  ?  And  has  not  every  one  sometimes  cher- 
ished and  indulged  them  ?  They  may  not,  indeed 
often  the  worst  of  them  may  never  have  ripened 
into  action.  Lack  of  opportunity,  or  the  fear  of 
consequences,  or  pride,  or  the  final  triumph  of 
principle,  may  have  kept  them  down  ;  but  who  has 
not  felt  them  ?  w^ho  is  not  stained  with  the  guilt  of 
them  ?  Such  thoughts  are  not  seen  by  other  men. 
No  one  would  have  them  seen  or  known  for  the 
world  ;  and  yet  they  do  really  have  place  as  essen- 
tial elements  in  the  character,  and  in  the  Eye  of 
Omniscience  the  guilt  of  them  lies  upon  the  soul. 
There  is  no  one  who  has  not  cherished  them  at 
some  time  or  other  ;  no  one  probably  who  has  not 
on  some  occasion  admitted  one  or  another  of  them 
among  the  motives  of  his  action.  It  may  even  have 
happened  that  some  of  our  actions  which  have  been 
applauded,  or  would  have  been  if  seen  by  others,  as 
eminently  good,  have  really  been  for  this  reason, 
because  springing  from  such  motives,  exceedingly 
vile. 

The  true  claim,  then,  for  the  biographies  of  the 
Old  Testament  Scriptures  is  that  they  are  true  to 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "HIGHER  CRITICISM."  57 

human  nature,  in  that  they  portray  not  only  the 
acts  of  their  subjects  and  ascribe  them  to  the  best 
motives  which  the  judgment  of  charity  will  permit, 
but  lay  bare,  as  with  the  finger  of  the  Omniscient 
Judge,  the  secret  thoughts  and  intents  of  their 
hearts,  and  show  accurately  how  those  thoughts  de- 
veloped into  action  and  shaped  the  life.  And  the 
difficulty  which  we  have  in  passing  our  human 
judgment  upon  the  true  relative  standing  of  such 
characters  as  are  portrayed  in  the  Bible  is  a  diffi- 
culty of  personal  experience — a  difficulty  which  has 
its  application  to  the  inmost  secrets  of  our  own 
hearts  no  less  than  to  the  records  of  the  Book  which 
claims  for  its  Author  Him  by  whom  the  heart  is 
thoroughly  known. 

There  can  be  no  possible  doubt  of  the  thorough- 
ness of  such  disclosure  in  the  Bible  record  of  the 
life  and  character  of  David.  Every  act  and  inci- 
dent in  his  career,  from  young  manhood  to  old  age 
and  the  final  end,  is  included  in  it  and  fully  re- 
lated. His  every  fault,  his  every  foible  is  search- 
ingly  exposed.  There  is  in  his  biographers  an  equal 
readiness  to  put  him  into  the  light  of  the  most 
translucent  scrutiny  when  deserving  of  disesteem 
for  indiscretions,  blame  for  follies  and  faults,  and 
even  deep  condemnation  for  heinous  sin,  as  when 
most  exemplarily  fulfilling  the  high  ideal  of  the 


58  BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIGHER  CRITICISM." 

"  man  after  God's  own  heart  ;"  and  by  his  heroic 
magnanimity,  his  unequalled  fervency  of  devo- 
tional sentiment,  and  unparalleled  zeal  in  the  ser- 
vice and  for  the  honor  of  God,  justifying  the  high 
estimation  in  which  he  is  represented  as  standing 
before  God  and  men. 

The  record  of  his  great  crime — the  crime  which, 
in  our  siffht,  casts  its  dark  shadow  over  his  whole 
career,  and  so  terribly  baffles  our  capabilities  of  just 
discrimination  in  weighing  his  character^- makes  its 
exposure  as  searching,  as  unreserved,  as  thorough 
as  can  be  conceived  to  be  possible  even  in  the  final 
Judgment  Day.  From  the  first  instigation  of  lust 
by  a  casual  glance,  through  every  stage  of  its 
secretly  cherished  development,  and  by  every  step 
that  was  taken  for  its  unhallowed  gratification,  even 
to  the  final  culmination  in  a  deed  of  direful  and 
damnable  wickedness,  the  entire  transaction  is  laid 
open,  and  every  secret  in  it,  as  seen  by  the  eye  of 
God  Himself,  is  unreservedly  brought  out  into  a 
thorough  exposure  of  its  criminal  -blameworthiness. 

But  it  is  a  very  significant  fact  that  David's  sense 
of  guilt  in  the  case,  according  to  the  same  record, 
was  extremely  imperfect  ;  so  much  so,  that  his 
conscience  appears  to  have  been  entirely  easy  until 
his  righteous  instincts  were  roused  by  J^athan's 
parable  of  the  man  who  had  robbed  his  neighbor  of 


BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  EIOHEB  0RITICI83L"  59 

his  one  ewe  lamb,  and  guilt  similar  to  that  of  such 
a  deed  was  charged  directly  upon  David  by  the 
prophet's  declaration,  "Thou  art  the  man."  It 
would  be  incredible  that  one  living  in  our  time  and 
under  our  degree  of  moral  light  could  have  been  so 
insensible  of  guilt  in  the  commission  of  such  an  act. 
But  we  must  remember,  as  already  observed,  how 
imperfectly  the  lines  of  moral  discrimination  had 
been  drawn  in  the  time  of  David,  and  to  this  con- 
sideration we  must  add  another  which  is  of  great 
weight  in  the  case — viz.,  the  fact  that  the  right  of 
an  Oriental  monarch  to  the  persons  and  lives  of 
his  subjects,  with  scarcely  any  limit  of  accounta- 
Mlity,  was  then  universally  admitted.  The  true 
reading  of  the  case  then  comes  out,  and  the  moral 
insensibility  of  David  in  this  instance  stands  for  us 
as  a  very  notable  example  of  an  imperfect  stage  in 
the  education  of  the  human  conscience,  and  it  also 
affords  a  very  striking  proof,  additional  to  many 
others,  that  the  prophetic  sense  of  righteousness  in 
the  Old  Testament  economy  was  derived  from  in- 
spirations of  a  Spirit  of  holiness  infinitely  superior 
to  any  possible  instinct  or  impulse  of  the  Zeitgeist 
of  that  age. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  must  be  that  the  entire 
record  of  the  life  of  David  presented  in  the  Old 
Testament  justifies  the  traditionary  ideal  of  him, 


00  BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  "  HIOHER  CRITICISM." 

since  we  have  therein  an  eminent  example  of  one 
living  in  an  age  of  crude  ethical  discrimination, 
and  not  superior  to  it  in  his  natural  perceptions, 
yet  of  remarkable  genius  for  spiritual  insight  and 
poetic  expression  ;  of  extraordinary  capability  for 
heroic  achievement ;  of  magnanimous  impulses  and 
of  great  personal  magnetism,  chosen  by  Divine 
grace  for  special  instruction  and  inspiration,  by  the 
guidance  of  which  he  was  brought  to  see  himself 
with  an  insight  more  nearly  Divine,  and  became  a 
preacher  of  righteousness  not  only  for  his  own  gen- 
eration, but  for  all  time.  While  the  Book  of 
Psalms  has  for  many  generations  borne  his  name, 
it  has  never  been  supposed,  even  in  "  traditional 
orthodoxy,"  to  have  been  originally  composed  in 
its  entirety  by  him.  Many  of  the  psalms  have 
from  the  first  been  plainly  ascribed  in  their  very 
titles  to  other  authors  ;  and  it  is  a  fair  subject  for 
critical  investigation  whether  the  greater  part  of 
the  psalms, or  even  a  very  large  proportion  of  them, 
were  his  personal  composition.  But  whatever  may 
be  the  final  result  of  such  investigation,  it  is  not  to 
be  decided  by  offhand  objections  to  the  traditional 
authorship,  much  less  by  wholesale  claims  to  nine- 
teenth century  infallibility  in  determining  exactly 
by  its  microscopic  critical  sagacity  the  original  au- 
thorship,  motive,   and  age  of  every  word  of  the 


BIBLICAL  IliSTOBT  AND  "  HIGIIEB  CBITICISM."  61 

Psalms,  or  indeed  of  any  part  of  the  Bible.  Cer- 
tainly, the  reasons  which  have  thus  far  been  ad- 
duced in  the  processes  of  "  higher  criticism"  are 
not  sufficient  for  reasonable  doubt,  much  less  for 
denial,  that  the  traditionary  ascription  of  the  author- 
ship of  many  of  the  psalms  to  David  was  made 
rightly  and  on  valid  ground  in  the  first  place,  or 
that  his  extraordinary  spiritual  insight  and  poetic 
skill,  combined  with  his  eminent  opportunity  for 
ordering  the  psalmody  of  the  sanctuary,  were  an 
ample  justification  for  publishing  the  entire  collec- 
tion of  the  inspired  psalms  under  his  name. 

That  the  fifty-first  psalm  was  originally  an  ex- 
pression of  his  sense  of  personal  guilt,  when  his 
conscience  had  been  quickened  after  his  great  sin, 
has  never  been  doubted  until  very  recently  ;  and 
much  more  conclusive  reasons  than  those  which 
criticism  has  yet  adduced  must  be  given  before  his 
authorship  of  it  can  be  pronounced  disproved.  As 
the  Psalm  of  Penitence,  what  an  inspiration  it  has 
been  !  what  an  uplift  it  has  given  !  what  relief  it 
has  afforded  !  what  light  it  has  brought  to  myriads 
of  sin-stained  and  burdened  souls  in  every  genera- 
tion since  his  time  !  Who  can  doubt  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  penitence  which  found  its  expression  in 
such  language  ?  Who  can  wonder  that  the  prophet 
of  the  compassionate  God  who  willeth  not  the  death 


62  BIBLICAL  HISTORY  AND  '' IIIOHEB  CRITICISM:' 

of  a  sinner,  but  liad  rather  that  he  would  turn  and 
live,  after  having  brought  him  to  see  and  acknowl- 
edge the  iniquity  of  his  sin  by  the  convicting  charge, 
"  Thou  art  the  man,'''  was  also  authorized  to  make 
to  him  the  gracious  announcement,  "  The  Lord 
hath  put  away  thy  sin  /" 


THE     INSPIRATION     OF    THE    OLD 
TESTAMENT   HISTORY. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  INSPIEATION    OF   THE   OLD   TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 

It  should  be  distinctly  observed  that  the  assump- 
tions discussed  in  the  last  chapter  are  not  those  of 
higher  criticism  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  words. 
They  are  simply,  as  already  said,  assumptions  of 
predetermined  scepticism.  The  legitimate  work  of 
higher  criticism  is  not  here  questioned.  The 
scholarship  which  leaves  no  secret  of  the  past  un- 
discovered and  counts  nothing  too  remote  to  be 
investigated  is  worthy  of  all  honor.  It  is  especially 
worthy  of  honor  when  it  is  the  result  of  lifelong 
study  devoted  patiently  and  reverently  to  the  in- 
vestigation of  the  historical  origin  of  the  books 
which  have  come  to  us  under  a  unique  claim  to 
Divine  inspiration,  and  to  a  thorough  analysis  of 
the  process  by  which  this  claim  has  been  authenti- 
cated and  sealed.  But  it  is  not  superstition,  it  is 
simply  truth  of  feeling  and  perception,  which  rec- 
ognizes the  ground  thus  trodden  as  holy  ground, 
and  a  spirit  of  profound  reverence  is  surely  a  be- 
coming— shall  we  not  say  an  indispensable  ? — quali- 
fication for  any  one  who  assumes  for  himself  the 


66  INSPIRA TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR T. 

place  of  an  expert  to  survey  it  and  determine  its 
value.  Entirelj'^  aside  from  any  claim  for  such  rev- 
erence, which  may  be  made  on  the  score  of  religion, 
it  is  as  indispensably  essential  in  a  true  historical 
spirit  ;  and  equally  indispensable  would  seem  to  be 
a  combination  of  both  historical  and  spiritual  in- 
sight, to  perceive  and  feel  in  their  true  relations  all 
the  factors  in  its  original  consecration,  and  which, 
in  legitimate  evolution,  have  secured  its  recognition 
as  sacred  ground  ever  since.  Criticism,  when 
rooted  and  grounded  in  such  scholarship  and  main- 
tained in  such  sph'it,  may  legitimately  raise  many 
questions  and  suggest  many  points  for  reconsider- 
ation ;  and  there  is  no  danger  that  the  foundations 
of  faith  will  be  undermined  or  seriously  disturbed. 
Whatever  reasons  for  doubt  concerning  the  au- 
thorship or  original  date  of  any  part  of  the  sacred 
Scriptures  may  be  found  by  such  reverent  and 
scholarly  criticism,  this  much  for  the  substantial 
historical  veracity  of  the  Old  Testament  may  be 
considered  as  settled  beyond  possible  controversy  : 
that  it  is,  as  a  whole,  absolutely  demonstrative  in 
evidence  of  the  existence,  in  the  early  ages  of  the 
world's  history  to  which  its  records  belong,  of  a 
people  who  were,  or  at  least  supposed  themselves 
to  be,  under  an  economy  of  special  covenant  with 
Godj  and,  as  such,  made  recipients  of  special  reve- 


INSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HI8T0R  Z.   67 

lation  of  Plis  nature  and  will.  To  our  personal 
faith  there  is  no  need  of  the  qualifying  clause — 
"or  at  least  supposed  themselves  to  be" — in  this 
proposition  ;  for,  to  our  mind,  the  proof  is  conclu- 
sive that  the  supposition  was  firmly  grounded  in 
fact.  But  leaving  such  proof  out  of  present  view, 
it  may  confidently  be  asserted  that  the  proposition 
as  it  stands  is  indisputable. 

Taking,  then,  the  existence  of  such  a  people  in 
the  past  as  an  assured  historical  fact,  there  can  be 
no  question  of  the  importance  of  determining,  if  we 
may,  whence  the  belief  that  they  had  been  singled 
out  for  such  an  economy  originated  ;  how  it  must 
have  affected  their  national  consciousness  ;  and 
how  it  did,  in  fact,  differentiate  them  from  the 
rest  of  the  world,  making  them  both  in  conscious- 
ness and  fact  "  a  peculiar  people  !" 

It  will  not  do,  as  Rcnan  and  others  of  like  scepti- 
cal temper  have  done,  to  say  that  their  belief  con- 
cerning their  relation  to  the  Deity  was  simply  their 
national  phase  of  a  common  superstition  in  their 
time  ;  that  Jehovah — or,  more  properly,  Yahveh — 
was  simply  their  name  for  the  Divine  Being  whom 
they  supposed  to  be  their  local  or  national  guardian 
among  the  celestial  powers.  It  will  not  do  because 
it  is  not  true.  It  is  not  consistent  with  a  fair  ac- 
ceptance of  historical  evidence  or  an  honest  inter- 


68  INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 

pretation  of  historical  documents.  Nothing  in  his- 
tory can  be  more  certain  and  nothing  more  indis- 
putable than  the  fact  that  the  revelation  of  Jehovah, 
as  represented  in  the  Bible  to  have  been  made  to 
the  Jewish  people  and  received  by  them,  was  a  rev- 
elation of  God  as  the  absolutely  Supreme  God  of 
the  universe,  the  only  Living  and  True  God, 
whose  perfectly  righteous  sovereignty  is  over  all 
from  the  beginning,  and  who  will  not  divide  His 
glory  with  another.  This  is  the  doctrine,  not  of 
one  leader,  but  of  every  one  in  ancient  Judea — of 
lawgiver,  prophet,  priest,  psalmist,  poet,  and  moral- 
ist alike  ;  not  of  one  stage  in  their  historic  evolu- 
tion, but  of  every  stage,  from  the  earliest  beginning 
of  their  recorded  history  to  the  very  end. 

Now  the  Hebraic  conception  of  God  stands  abso- 
lutely alone  in  ancient  history.  No  trace  of  such  a 
conception  can  be  found  in  the  literary  or  monu- 
mental remains  of  any  other  ancient  people.  The 
Egyptians,  Assyrians,  Babylonians,  and  others  are 
clearly  proved,  by  modern  discoveries,  to  have 
been  not  devoid  of  religious  faith  or  unaccustomed 
to  the  expression  of  religious  sentiments  and  affec- 
tions in  appropriate  acts  of  devotional  worship  ; 
but  the  god  of  their  worship  is  always  found  to  be 
a  local  divinity.  Their  piety  never  gets  beyond 
the  conception  of  God  as  the  tutelary  divinity  of 


IN8PIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  F.   69 

the  nation.  A  slight  trace  of  faith  in  God  as  the 
Supreme  Being  has,  indeed,  been  thought  to  be 
indicated  in  the  name  which  stood  for  the  father  of 
gods  and  men,  in  both  the  ancient  and  the  classic 
mythologies  ;  but  we  look  in  vain  for  influential 
tokens  of  such  faith  in  the  national  consciousness, 
or  proofs  of  it  in  their  actual  history. 

It  is  only  in  ancient  Israel  that  we  do  find  it,  and 
there  it  is  fundamental  and  everywhere  dominant. 
Whether  in  the  prophetic  or  the  Mosaic  or  even  the 
patriarchal  eras,  the  characteristic  mark  of  this  his- 
tory, its  inspiring  principle,  we  might  even  say,  the 
very  reason  of  its  being,  is  faith  in  God,  the  Supreme 
Being,  Creator,  and  Ruler  of  the  universe.  The 
foundation  source  of  all  their  knowledge  was  the 
sublime  sentence,  "  In  the  beginning  God  created 
the  heavens  and  the  earth."  If  their  father  Abra- 
ham was  believed  to  have  been  selected  by  special 
Divine  favor,  and  taken  into  a  special  covenanted 
relationship  with  God,  it  is  by  the  same  only  Su- 
preme God,  maintaining  the  same  sole  sovereignty 
over  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  that  this  covenant 
economy  was  understood  to  have  been  constituted. 
"  When  Abraham  was  ninety  years  old  and  nine, 
the  Lord  appeared  to  Abram,  and  said,  I  am  God 
Almighty  ;  walk  before  Me,  and  be  thou  perfect. 
And  1  will  make  My  covenant  between  Me  and 


70   INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 

thee,  and  will  multiplj  thee  exceedingly.  .  .  .  Be- 
hold, My  covenant  is  with  thee,  and  thou  shalt  be 

THE  FATHER    OF    A   MULTITUDE    OF  NATIONS.       Neither 

shall  thy  name  any  more  be  called  Abram,  but  thy 
name  shall  be  Abraham  ;  for  the  father  of  a  multi- 
tude of  nations  have  1  made  thee."'^  And  yet 
again,  "  The  angel  of  the  Lord  called  unto  Abra- 
ham a  second  time  out  of  heaven,  and  said,  By 
Myself  have  1  sworn,  saith  the  Lord,  .  .  .  that  in 
blessing  1  will  bless  thee,  and  in  multiplying  I  will 
multiply  thy  seed  as  the  stars  of  the  heaven,  and  as 
the  sand  which  is  upon  the  sea-shore  ;  and  thy  seed 
shall  possess  the  gate  of  his  enemies  ;  and  in  thy 
seed  shall  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  be  bless- 
ed, "f  If  it  was  believed  that  a  still  further  and 
much  fuller  revelation  of  God  was  made  to  Moses 
five  centuries  later,  under  a  new  name,  there  was 
no  thought  of  any  other  than  the  One  Supreme 
God  as  the  Author  of  this  revelation,  and  the  new 
name  was  not  for  a  moment  understood  to  denote 
another  god,  but  only  to  betoken  the  heritage  of 
special  grace,  into  which  the  seed  of  Abraham  were 
now  admitted  under  a  national  constitution  and 
government  of  laws  which  Moses  was  authorized  to 
establish  and  promulgate. 

*  Gen.  17  :  2-5,  Revised  Version, 
f  Gen.  32  :  16-18,  Revised  Version. 


IJVSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  Y.    71 

"  And  God  said  unto  Moses,  1  am  that  I  am  : 
and  He  said,  Tlins  shalt  thou  say  unto  the  children 
of  Israel  .  .  .  The  Lord,  the  God  of  your  fathers, 
THE  God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac,  and  of  Jacob, 
hath  sent  Me  unto  you  :  this  is  My  name  forever, 
and  this  is  My  memorial  unto  all  generations.  Go, 
and  gather  the  elders  of  Israel,  and  say  unto  them, 
The  Lord,  the  God  of  your  fathers,  the  God  of 
Abraham,  of  Isaac,  and  of  Jacob,  hath  appeared 
unto  me,  saying,  I  have  surely  visited  you,  and 
seen  that  which  is  done  to  you  in  Egypt  ;  and  I 
have  said,  I  will  bring  you  up  out  of  the  affliction 
of  Egypt  unto  the  land  of  the  Canaanite,  and  the 
Hittite,  and  the  Amorite,  and  the  Perizzite,  and 
the  Hivite,  and  the  Jebusite,  unto  a  land  flowing 
with  milk  and  honey. '"^  "And  God  spake  unto 
Moses,  and  said  unto  him,  I  am  Jehovah  :  and  I 
appeared  unto  Abraham,  unto  Isaac,  and  unto 
Jacob,  AS  God  Almighty,  but  by  My  name  Jehovah 
I  was  not  known  to  them.  .  .  .  Wherefore  say 
unto  the  children  of  Israel,  1  am  Jehovah,  and  I 
will  bring  you  out  from  under  the  burdens  of  the 
Egyptians,  and  I  will  rid  you  out  of  their  bondage, 
and  I  will  redeem  you  with  a  stretched  out  arm, 
and  with  great  judgments  :  and  I  will  take  you  to 

*  Ex.  3  :  14-18. 


72  I:N'SPIRA  TION  of  old  testament  niSTOR  T. 

Me  for  a  people,  and  I  will  be  to  you  a  God  :  and 
ye  shall  know  that  I  am  Jehovah  your  God,  which 
bringeth  you  out  from  under  the  burdens  of  the 
Egyptians.  And  I  will  bring  you  in  unto  the  land, 
concerning  which  I  lifted  up  My  hand  to  give  it  to 
Abraham,  to  Isaac,  and  to  Jacob  ;  and  I  will  give 
it  to  yon  for  an  heritage  :  I  am  Jehovah."* 

Whatever  may  be  the  final  conclusion  of  criticism 
concerning  the  true  date  of  the  original  composition 
of  the  Pentateuch,  or  any  part  of  it,  will  not  alter 
or  disprove  the  fact  that  when  the  religious  faith 
and  worship  of  the  nation  is  determinable  by  the 
canons  even  of  criticism  itself,  its  relation  to  God 
as  the  Supreme  Being  is  found  to  be  in  exact  ac- 
cordance with  these  expressions  ;  nor  only  this,  but 
with  a  tradition  settled  and  unquestioningly  ac- 
cepted, that  such  had  been  its  relation  from  the 
first,  and  was  then  determined  by  revelation,  as  here 
recorded. 

The  prophets  not  only  called  upon  the  people, 
constantly  and  with  every  form  of  emphatic  speech, 
for  devoted  allegiance  to  the  worship  and  service 
of  Jehovah  as  God  Most  High,  Almighty  in  uni- 
versal sovereignty,  but  appealed  without  admission 
of  possible  doubt  to  their  own  consciences  for  recog- 

*  Ex.  6  :  3-8,  Revised  Version. 


INSPIBA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR T.   73 

nition  of  the  peculiar  obligation  to  siicli  allegiance, 
which  the  recorded  special  revelations  had  held  the 
nation  to  from  the  very  beginning.  It  was  suffi- 
cient for  them  to  appeal  to  the  religious  conscious- 
ness of  the  people,  traceable  to  this  original  inspira- 
tion ;  and  the  charge  that  they  were  untrue  to  it 
was  the  most  convicting  reproof  wliich  the  prophetic 
zeal  for  purity  of  faith  and  worship  could  allege 
against  their  idolatrous  propensities.  Indeed,  the 
very  fact  that  idolatry  was  accounted  a  sin  in  Israel 
was  in  itself  a  proof  of  their  admitted  obligation  to 
the  worship  and  service  of  God  as  God  alone.  The 
nations  around  them  having  gods  many  and  lords 
many  might,  without  blame  or  inconsistency,  join 
with  one  another  when  in  friendly  alliance  in  the 
religious  rites  supposed  to  be  pleasing  to  their  sev- 
eral national  divinities,  and  any  one  of  them  might 
admit  into  its  pantheon  the  god  or  gods  of  a  sub- 
jugated people  among  the  other  legitimate  fruits  of 
conquest,  their  theory  being  that  the  tutelary  divin- 
ity of  their  own  nation  was  proved  by  the  victorious 
result  to  be  stronger,  but  not  therefore  more  divine 
than  the  god  or  gods  of  the  nation  which  had  been 
compelled  to  yield  to  its  sway.  But  in  Israel  there 
was  never  for  a  moment  an  allowed  acceptance  of 
the  heathen  faith  or  worship.  From  the  first  it 
was  fixed  in  the  national  consciousness  that  every 


74  INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  BISTORT. 

species  or  form  of  idolatrous  worship  was  a  deadly 
sin,  wliicli  Jehovah  could  not  look  upon  with  the 
least  degree  of  allowance.  It  is  admitted,  even  by 
the  critics  who  would  be  most  disposed  to  minimize 
any  fundamental  distinction  between  the  religious 
attitude  of  Israel  and  that  of  other  ancient  nations, 
that  "  Israel  had  no  mythology,"  and  that  "  we 
have  neither  the  slightest  trace  in  Israel  of  Jeho- 
vah's being  regarded  as  a  primus  inter  jpares,  nor 
of  His  having  a  consort,  as  Baal  had  in  Astarte."* 
The  fundamental  law  of  faith  and  worship  for  all 
Israel  was  ever  that  which  was  held  to  have  been 
given  as  the  first  commandment  of  Revelation  : 
"  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  thou  shalt  have  none 
other  gods  but  Me." 

In  this  respect  Israel  stood  always  and  every- 
where a  nation  apart.  It  always  had  and  never  lost 
this  characteristic  and  fundamental  distinction  from 
all  the  rest  of  the  world.  On  the  common  ground 
of  historical  life  the  lot  of  Israel  seems  to  have  had 
no  special  advantages  ;  it  was  simply  that  of  one  of 
the  smaller  nations  of  the  world,  such  as  the  Am- 
monites or  Moabites,  and  its  people  had  to  experi- 
ence the  common  vicissitudes  of  historical  develop- 
ment.    They  might  associate  and  mingle  with  other 

*  Stade,  as  quoted  by  Professor  Robertson,  "  Early  Religion 
of  Israel,"  p.  399. 


INSPIBA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOB  Y.   75 

people  in  commercial  intercourse  or  political  alli- 
ances ;  tliey  might  be  "scattered  and  peeled" 
among  nations  foreign  and  even  hostile  to  all  their 
customary  ways  ;  might,  at  times,  be  almost  lost  in 
the  absorbing  pressure  of  sncli  foreign  life,  with  all 
its  influences  ;  but  this  one  characteristic  they  never 
lost  :  the  God  of  their  fathers  ever  remained,  in 
their  faith  and  worship,  the  only  Lord  God,  and  to 
acknowledge  any  other  being  in  all  the  universe  as 
God  beside  Him  was  but  idolatry,  the  most  heinous 
and  degrading  of  deadly  sins. 

This,  then,  is  the  fact  which  demands  acceptance, 
and  requires  to  be  accounted  for.  The  "  critical" 
theory,  though  compelled  to  accept,  does  not  ac- 
count for  it.  It  is  not  theory,  however,  but  histori- 
cal fact  with  which  we  are  concerned  here  ;  and  it 
is  fact  indisputable  on  the  accepted  principles  of 
historic  certitude  that  the  Hebrew  monotheism  had 
this  unique  character  and  attitude  in  contradistinc- 
tion from  the  theism  of  every  other  nation  in  the 
Old  World. 

This  characteristic,  it  is  to  be  carefully  observed, 
was  not  only  their  belief  in  the  Divine  oneness  and 
universal  supremacy,  but  also  in  the  essential,  uni- 
versal, and  undeviating  righteousness  of  the  Divine 
Being  and  government.  The  gods  of  the  nations 
were,  for  the  most  part,  as  enormous  in  their  pas- 


76   IN8PIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  T. 

sions  as  in  their  strength.  The  theistic  conception 
of  paganism  everywhere  was  ahnost  devoid  of  the 
ethical  element.  Its  deities  were  supposed  to  be 
good  to  their  devotees,  and  were  therefore  wor- 
shipped ;  but  their  goodness  was  not  that  of  essen- 
tial virtue,  but  simply  special  kindness  to  their 
favorites.  The  most  monstrous  and  atrocious  vices 
were  attributed  to  them  without  the  least  thought 
of  inconsistency.  And  so,  even  in  their  worship, 
rites  of  impure  and  debasing  lust  had  their  place, 
and  the  foulest  wickedness  in  the  worshippers  was 
not  supposed  to  lessen  in  the  least  the  favorable 
acceptance  of  them  in  the  sight  of  their  god. 

But  the  Hebraic  conception  of  God  was  essen- 
tially and  fundamentally  ethical.  The  perfect 
righteousness,  the  absolute  and  undeviating  holi- 
ness of  Jehovah  was  a  truth  as  fundamental  in  the 
national  consciousness  as  His  universal  sovereignty. 
To  say  that  holiness  was  in  the  Hebrew  mind  a  rec- 
ognized characteristic  of  Jehovah  would  be  a  very 
feeble  assertion  of  the  fact.  It  was  recognized  not 
only  as  a  characteristic,  but  as  an  essential  attribute, 
eternally  identical  with  His  very  nature.  No  shade 
of  iniquity  could  be  possibly  associated  with  Him. 
In  Himself  and  in  all  His  manifestations  and  ad- 
ministrative acts  He  was  the  very  ideal,  essentially 
and  eternally,  of  perfect  righteousness.     And  con- 


IW8PIBA TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  EI8T0R  F.   77 

sistently  in  all  His  requirements,  "  Be  ye  lioly,  for 
I  am  holy,"  was  the  recognized  fundamental  con- 
dition of  acceptance  in  His  sight,  whether  for  wor- 
ship or  for  conduct  in  all  the  actions  and  intercourse 
of  daily  living. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  in  holding  and 
maintaining  this  exalted  conception  of  the  nature 
and  character  of  God,  ancient  Israel  stood  absolutely 
alone  among  all  the  nations  of  the  Old  World.  It 
was  by  this  peculiarity  of  their  theistic  faith  that 
they  were  kept  ever,  in  every  vicissitude  of  their 
national  history,  a  "  separate  and  peculiar  people," 
irreconcilably  separate  in  all  their  religious  devo- 
tions, and  peculiar  in  the  maintenance  of  at  least  an 
ideal  standard  of  immeasurable  superiority  in  prac- 
tical ethics,  even  though  their  attainment  was  con- 
fessedly short  of  it  to  a  grievous  extent  in  actual 
personal  living. 

Now  the  problem  which  an  honest  student  of  his- 
tory has  no  right  to  evade  is  how  to  account  for 
this  unique  characteristic.  The  question  to  be  an- 
swered is,  "Where  did  Israel  get  this  grand  theistic 
conception  ?  May  we  not  say  rather.  Whence  and 
how  came  to  Israel  this  knowledge  of  God  ?  this 
true  knowledge — knowledge  which  has  been  verified 
and  confirmed  in  all  human  civilization,  concerning 
the  nature  and  will  of  the  Almighty  Father,  by 


78  INSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  Y. 

whom  this  world  and  all  worlds  have  been  created 
and  are  governed. 

It  is  a  favorite  theory  of  some  among  those  who 
profess  to  be  "  higher  critics,"  that  in  its  theism, 
as  in  all  other  respects,  the  Hebrew  history  was, 
like  other  histories,  simply  an  evolutionary  develop- 
ment. They  tell  us  that  in  the  early  days,  and  even 
down  to  the  time  of  the  prophets,  the  Israelites 
were,  in  their  religions  ideas  and  practices,  very 
much  like  the  other  small  nations  of  Palestine, 
such  as  the  Ammonites  and  Moabites  ;  their  God, 
Yahveh,  being  to  them  very  much  what  Moloch 
and  Chemosh  were  to  these  neighboring  peoples, 
except  that  Yahveh  was  more  selfish  in  his  local 
favoritism  than  either  of  these  other  deities,  and 
that  the  higher  conception  was  a  later  evolution  in 
their  theistic  history.  When  we  ask  for  the  causal 
influence  of  this  particular  development  in  Israel, 
and  why  nothing  like  it  is  found  in  the  neighboring 
nations,  the  only  answer  given  is  that  it  is  traceable 
to  no  special  influence,  unless  it  be  to  a  special 
genius  for  religion,  which  the  Israelites  seem  to 
have  had  and  the  others  lacked.  Why  even  this 
peculiar  genius  should  have  taken  such  an  immeas- 
urably exalted  leap  after  ages  of  national  training 
in  low  and  base  superstition,  and  at  a  time  when 
they  had  reached  a  stage  of  their  history  most  de- 


INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  UISTORT.    79 

pressed,  there  is  no  reason  given  by  that  class  of 
these  critics  who  take  pure  evolutionism  for  the 
only  law  of  historical  progress.  Others,  however, 
seem  to  themselv^es  to  find  the  sufficient  cause  in 
the  preaching  and  writing  just  at  this  point  of  the 
religious  teachers  who  were  known  as  the  prophets  ; 
but  here  again  the  proposed  explanation  signally 
fails  to  explain.  The  ethic  monotheism  of  Israel  is 
carefully  labelled  "  the  prophetic  conception  ;" 
but  special  Divine  revelation  to  the  prophets  being 
at  the  same  time  as  carefully  denied,  and  the  rec- 
ords of  the  preceding  Mosaic  and  Abrahamic  revela- 
tions entirely  rejected,  it  is  impossible  to  see  whence 
the  prophets  got  their  conception,  or  by  what  influ- 
ence they  were  inspired  ;  if,  indeed,  their  inspira- 
tion in  any  true  sense  can  be  admitted. 

Now  it  is  certain  that  the  only  historical  docu- 
ments, or  records  claiming  to  be  historical,  which 
we  have  as  bearing  upon  this  point,  are  those  which 
are  contained  in  the  Old  Testament.  It  is  equally 
certain  that  the  explanation  which  they  afford  is, 
in  contrast  with  any  such  hypothesis,  entirely  suffi- 
cient, leaving  ground  for  no  other  possible  question 
than  that  if  they  be  historically  true.  This  explana- 
tion, which,  however,  it  should  be  distinctly  ob- 
served, appears  in  the  sacred  volume  not  in  the 
form  of  an  explanation,  but  simply  of  historical 


80  INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY. 

record,  is  that  the  Hebrew  conception  of  God  was 
specially  inspired  bj  direct  revelation  from  God 
Himself  ;  that  such  revelation  was  made,  first,  to 
the  founder  patriarch,  Abraham,  at  a  later  age  to 
Moses,  and  afterward  to  the  other  prophetic  leaders 
and  teachers  of  the  nation.  It  is  unquestionable 
that  this  explanation,  as  we  have  it,  has  the  form 
and  character  of  historical  narrations.  And  since 
the  question  at  issue  is  an  historical  one,  this  is  not 
to  be  overlooked.  The  "  critic"  who  claims  to 
have  found  a  sufficient  explanation  of  this  unique 
conception  of  the  Divine  nature  and  government 
by  pronouncing  it  an  invention  of  "  the  prophets," 
may  reasonably  be  asked  why  "the  prophets" 
should  have  put  forth  their  invention  in  writings 
purporting  to  be  the  documentary  annals  and  laws 
of  the  nation  from  its  very  foundation,  centuries 
before  their  time  ?  Nor  only  this,  but  to  have 
made  the  appeals  which  they  undeniably  did  make 
to  the  national  consciousness  for  verification  and 
acknowledgment  of  the  historical  truth  of  their 
claim  that  Jehovah,  the  Lord  God  Almighty,  had, 
through  all  the  nation's  history,  been  known  to  be 
the  only  living  and  true  God  ;  and  to  have  put  the 
charge  directly  and  boldly  to  the  conscience  of 
every  individual  in  the  nation,  that  the  Israelites 
were  false  to  their  own  traditions  and  their  lifelong 


IN8PIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HI8T0R  F.    81 

religious  convictions  in  recognizing  any  being  as 
Divine  but  Jehovah  alone  ?  How  could  the  proph- 
ets have  expected  that  such  an  appeal  and  such  a 
charge  would  be  accepted  by  the  people  ?  And 
how  is  it  possible  to  explain  the  indubitable  fact 
that  they  were  so  accepted,  if  the  Jehovah  of  the 
prophets  were  not  recognized  and  acknowledged  by 
the  people  as  none  other  God  than  He  unto  whom 
alone  they  and  their  fathers  had  always  been  taught 
to  render  worship  and  service  ? 

These  questions  do  not  touch  the  literary  details 
with  which  linguistic  scholarship  may  legitimately 
occupy  itself.  The  objections  against  the  so-called 
"critical"  theory  of  the  Israelite  history  does  not 
require  an  insistence  upon  the  historical  accuracy 
(in  accordance  with  our  modern  historic  sense)  of 
every  part  of  the  Pentateuch  or  other  pre-prophetic 
books  of  tlie  Old  Testament  as  we  now  have  them. 
But  they  do  call  for  an  honest  application  of  the 
admitted  principles  of  historical  science  to  that  his- 
tory, and  in  such  application  seem  to  leave  no  room 
for  any  other  conclusion  than  that  of  the  assured 
admission  of  the  substantial  truth  of  the  Biblical 
records. 

It  is  a  late  age  to  ask,  as  if  the  question  were  a 
new  one,  in  precisely  what  way  do  these  records 
represent  the  revelation  to  have  been  made  ?     But 


82  INSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR T. 

there  are  pressing  reasons  in  our  time  for  consider- 
ing this  question  with  renewed  interest,  and  there 
are  some  pecuh'ar  advantages  in  its  scientific  attain- 
ments for  a  discriminating  consideration  of  the  sub- 
ject which  have  been  wanting  in  any  previous  age. 
Particularly  is  this  true  because  of  its  advances  in 
physiological  and  psychological  knowledge,  as  well 
as  of  its  explorations  in  the  fields  of  archoeology 
and  history.  In  all  ages,  from  the  very  first,  it  has 
been  held  to  be  the  fundamental  truth  of  the  case 
that  the  special  revelation  of  God  consisted  in  a 
direct  communication  from  God  Himself  to  the 
chosen  human  recipient  ;  that  this  was  true  alike  in 
relation  to  Abraham  and  Moses  as  to  the  prophets. 
But  possibly  it  has  not  been  sufficiently  noted,  or  not 
noted  with  sufficiently  discriminating  emphasis,  that 
the  Biblical  records  describe  each  of  such  special 
Divine  manifestations  as  having  been  made  in  a 
different  way.  To  Abraham  it  is  stated  that  the 
Lard  appeared  and  talked  with  him  ;  once  "in  a 
vision  ;"*  but  repeatedly  by  "  coming  and  stand- 
ing before"  him.  To  Moses,  while  the  statement 
is  made  again  and  again  that  the  Lord  "  spake 
unto"  him  and  "said"  the  words  which  are  re- 
corded, yet  that  in  the  first  revelation  to  him  the 

*  Gen.  15  :  1. 


IN8PIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  II18T0R  Y.   83 

Divine  manifestation  was  by  a  flame  of  tire  in  a 
bush  that  was  not  consumed,  and  a  Voice  calling 
out  of  the  bush  to  him  by  name  and  declaring,  "  I 
am  the  God  of  thy  father,  the  God  of  Abraham, 
the  God  of  Isaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob  ;"  yet 
chardno;  him  when  he  turned  aside  to  see  God, 
"  Draw  not  nigh  hither  :  put  off  thy  shoes  from  off 
thy  feet,  for  the  place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy 
ground."* 

And  many  years  afterward,  long  after  Moses  had 
become  familiar  with  Divine  communications,  and 
it  had  even  been  said  that  "the  Lord  spake  unto 
Moses  face  to  face,  as  a  man  speaketh  unto  his 
friend,"t  it  is  yet  recorded:}:  that  the  Lord  said 
unto  him,  "  Thou  canst  not  see  My  face  :  for  man 
shall  not  see  Me,  and  live,"  and  that  he  was  only 
permitted,  as  a  very  gracious  response  to  his  most 
earnest  and  persistent  entreaty  that  he  might  see 
God,  to  behold  not  His  "face,"  but  only  His 
"  back  ;"  and  that  only  after  special  preparation, 
by  being  put  for  protection  in  a  cleft  of  a  rock  and 
covered  with  the  Divine  §  hand.  To  the  prophets 
the  Divine  communications  came  "  at  sundry  times 
and  in  divers  manners."  To  Sanmel,  in  a  dream 
of  the  night  ;1|  to  Elijah,  by  a  "  still,  small  voice  ;"t 

*  Ex.  3  :  1-6.  t  Ex.  33  :  11.  X  Id.  vs.  20. 

§  Ex.  33  :  20-33.        |1 1  Sam.  3  :  1-10.        H  1  Kings  19  :  12. 


84  INSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HI8T0R  7. 

to  Zecliariali,  by  "  the  angel  of  the  Lord  ;"*  to 
Jeremiah,  by  a  vision  in  which  the  Lord  "  put  forth 
His  hand"f  and  touched  the  propliet's  mouth  ;  to 
Ezekiel,  by  "  visions  of  God,"  in  which  he  saw  the 
"  heavens  opened''  and  the  "  appearance  of  the 
likeness  of  the  glory  of  God  ;":{:  to  Isaiah,  by  a 
"  vision,"  in  which  he  "  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon 
a  throne,  high  and  lifted  up,  and  His  train  filled 
the  temple.  Above  Him  stood  the  seraphism  : 
each  one  had  six  wings  ;  with  twain  He  covered 
His  face,  and  with  twain  he  covered  His  feet,  and 
with  twain  He  did  fly.  And  one  cried  unto  an- 
other, and  said.  Holy,  holy,  holy,  is  the  Lord  of 
hosts  :  the  whole  earth  is  full  of  His  glory  ;"§  to 
Hosea  and  other  prophets  in  such  wise  that  the 
message  which  they  severally  proclaimed  might  be 
affirmed  without  a  doubt  on  their  part  to  be  "  the 
word  of  the  Lord,"  yet  with  no  explanation  of 
either  the  manner  in  which  tlie  revelation  was  made 
or  the  tokens  by  which  its  Divine  origin  was  assured. 
Now,  in  considering  these  various  descriptions  of 
the  manner  or  manners  in  wliicli  it  pleased  God  to 
communicate  with  His  chosen  prophets  by  special 
revelation,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  they  were 
written  many  ages  before  the  birth  of  all  that  is 

*  Zech.  1:9.  f  Jer.  1  :  1-10.  %  Ezek.  ch.  1  and  10. 

§  Isa.  6  :  1-4. 


mSPIEA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  Z.    85 

known  to  ns  as  modern  science.  The  wisest  men 
of  that  period  knew  almost  nothing  of  natural  forces 
or  laws  ;  they  had  only  the  scantiest  and  crudest 
knowledge  or  conception  of  natural  elements  ;  they 
had  not  learned  the  distinction  between  processes 
or  effects  which  are  material  and  those  which  are 
purely  spiritual.  Obviously,  then,  they  had  in 
their  speech  no  terms  to  express  such  distinction, 
and  of  necessity  must,  in  describing  either  the  one 
or  the  other,  have  used  terms  which  to  us  are  con- 
fusing and  very  hard  to  analyze.  When  we  try  to 
get  from  them  a  true  conception  of  the  precise  way 
in  which  the  Divine  revelation  in  any  case  was 
made,  we  need  to  free  our  minds,  as  far  as  possible, 
from  the  limitations  of  their  terras  of  literal  de- 
scription, and  reach  for  their  meaning  by  an  earnest 
and  persistent  endeavor  to  put  ourselves  in  mental 
attitude  as  nearly  as  we  may  in  their  place.  In 
this  attitude,  one  point  which  has  not  been  suffi- 
ciently regarded  in  many  theories  which  have  been 
and  still  are  held  concerning  both  revelation  and 
inspiration  should  be  clearly  understood  as  funda- 
mental— that  is,  the  absolute  jprohihition  in  Hebrew 
law  of  any  formal  representation  of  Jehovah,  or 
the  thought  of  any  possible  likeness  to  Him  in  the 
image  of  any  person  or  thing  in  the  created  uni- 
verse.     Therefore,    when    Moses    and    the   other 


86  INSPIMA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  7. 

prophets  use  anthropomorphic  terms  in  recording 
Divine  revelations,  when  they  speak  of  God  as 
"  seen"  by  them  in  the  form  of  man  or  angel,  and 
of  God  as  "coming"  to  them,  "standing"  by 
them,  "  putting  His  hand"  upon  them,  and  "talk- 
ing with"  them,  "  face  to  face,"  it  is  certain  thtit 
they  used  these  terms  only  because  they  had  no 
other  for  either  their  own  idea  or  the  apprehension 
of  their  contemporaries,  in  designating  the  fact  of 
a  Divine  revelation  as  having  been  made  to  them. 
They  "  saw"  God  most  certainly,  and  "  heard  His 
voice  ;"  but  it  was  with  the  mind's  eye  that  they 
saw  and  with  the  mind's  ear  that  they  heard  ;  and 
this  they  knew  as  well  as  we.  But  the  distinction 
was  understood  by  them  implicitly  rather  than  ex- 
plicitly, because  neither  in  their  speech  nor  their 
philosophy  had  the  terms  of  the  distinction  between 
physical  and  mental  action  been  apprehensively 
enunciated  or  formulated. 

This  limitation  of  their  capability  of  expression, 
however,  does  not  detract  in  the  least  from  the 
historical  truth  of  what  they  certainly  intended  to 
relate — viz.,  that  the  chosen  leaders  of  Israel  did 
receive  special  revelations  by  direct  communica- 
tion from  God  Himself,  in  which  He  quickened 
their  spiritual  apj^rehension  with  such  a  per- 
ception of  His  glory  in  the  perfection  of  holiness 


INSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HI8T0R  T.    87 

as  had   never  been  granted  to  mortal  on  earth  be- 
fore. 

This  is  the  fundamental  fact  in  the  history  of 
ancient  Israel,  and  without  the  admission  and  rec- 
ognition of  it  there  is  no  possibility  of  accounting 
for  the  unique  attitude  and  character  of  that  nation 
in  the  history  of  the  world.  From  first  to  last  the 
obligation  becanse  of  it  to  worship  and  serve  Jeho- 
vah as  the  only  living  and  true  God  was  the  con- 
trolling principle  of  the  Hebrew  national  life.  It 
is,  indeed,  to  be  admitted  that  both  the  rulers  and 
the  people  of  the  nation  were  in  many  instances 
false  to  their  elected  position  ;  that  there  was  a  be- 
setting fascination  for  them  in  the  lustful  indul- 
gences of  idolatry,  to  which  the  surrounding  and  at 
times  commingling  peoples  were  addicted.  But 
they  do  not  seem  ever  to  have  entirely  lost  the  con- 
sciousness of  their  election,  much  less  to  have  de- 
nied or  doubted  the  fact  of  Jehovah's  revelation  of 
His  power  and  Godhead  to  their  fathers.  To  this 
consciousness  the  prophets  uniformly  appealed  with- 
out the  least  apparent  apprehension  ever  that  the 
appeal  would  not  meet  with  a  response  of  spontane- 
ous assent.  Their  call  upon  Israel  was  never  in 
behalf  of  a  religion  that  was  in  any  sense  or  degree 
a  new  religion  to  them,  but  always  and  without 
qualification   for   allegiance   to   the   God   of   their 


88   INSPIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  Y. 

fathers,  the  God  who,  from  the  time  of  their  fathers, 
had  been  known  as  the  God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac, 
and  of  Jacob,  the  God  by  whose  sovereign  author- 
ity Moses  had  proclaimed  :  "  Hear,  O  Israel,  the 
Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord,"  and  whom  from  the 
earliest  consciousness  of  their  individual  lives  tliey 
had  known  and  worshipped  as  the  only  living  and 
true  God. 

The  history  of  ancient  Israel,  then,  was  demon- 
strably attested  as  an  inspired  history  throughout, 
its  inspiration  being  traceable  for  its  original  source 
to  direct  revelation  from  the  Infinite  Creator  and 
Ruler  of  the  world.  It  is  true  to  say  that  the  his- 
tory  was  inspired,  for  its  entire  movement  was  actu- 
ated and  dominated  by  the  principles  of  faith  and 
devotion  toward  Jehovah  as  the  revealed  God  of 
the  universe.  Tlie  least  that  can  be  said  of  the  Old 
Testament  records  is  that  they  are  substantially  his- 
torical, and  this  can  mean  nothing  less  than  that 
they  are  substantially  true. 

It  has  been  believed  for  many  centuries,  in  both 
Christendom  and  Judaism,  that  the  Biblical  books, 
which  are  in  part  the  historical  records  and  in  part 
expressions  of  the  devotional  life  of  ancient  Israel, 
and  which,  as  a  whole,  constitute  its  collected  and 
accredited  literature,  were  productions  of  authors 
who  wrote  them  under  a  special  kind  of  inspira- 


IN8PIRA  TION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTOR  Y.   89 

tion.  Many  have  held  this  point  of  faith,  as  if  it 
must  necessarily  include  the  opinion  that  these 
writers  were  exclusively  inspired,  and  so  inspired 
only  or  chiefly  for  the  very  purpose  of  writing  these 
books.  But  there  is  no  substantial  basis  for  this 
theory.  The  prophets  and  psalmists  were  undoubt- 
edly men  whose  spiritual  life  was  on  the  mountain- 
top  of  inspiration  ;  above  all  others  in  the  nation 
they  had  an  assured  consciousness  of  living  com- 
munion with  the  living  God,  Therefore  it  is  clear 
that  they  must  have  enjoyed  the  highest  degree  of 
ins])iration,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  through 
them,  we  have  the  purest  breathings  of  the  Divine 
Spirit.  It  is  reasonable  also  to  suppose  that  the  his- 
torical collections  of  the  elect  people,  stamped  a^ 
they  are  with  credentials  of  their  acceptance  by 
that  peoi^le  from  ancient  times  as  historically  true, 
would  not  have  been  left  without  some  special 
guardianship  of  the  Spirit  of  truth.  But  it  is  the 
deeper  truth  that  the  primary  seat  of  the  inspiration 
was  in  the  very  history  itself  ;  and  in  a  certain  sense, 
and  that  a  true  sense,  it  may  be  said  that  the  whole 
nation  was  inspired.  As  Moses  could  say  with 
truth,  at  a  time  when  Israel  was  still  in  the  crude 
civilization  of  nomadic  life  and  so  little  taught  as 
to  be  easily  seduced  by  false  teachers,  "  The  con- 
gregation is  all  holy,  and  the  Lord  is  among  them  ;" 


90  INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HI8T0BT. 

SO,  it  might  be  said,  the  congregation  is  all  inspired, 
and  in  their  assembly  is  the  dwelling-place  of  the 
Most  High.  Yes,  this  was  the  grand  truth  which 
was  the  inspiring  principle  in  the  whole  life,  and 
constitutes  the  key  to  the  entire  history  of  ancient 
Israel.  For  this,  to  bear  witness  to  it,  to  maintain 
it,  to  tell  it  out  among  the  nations,  to  carry  it  for- 
ward in  the  world's  history  till  the  times  of  prepara- 
tion should  be  fulfilled,  when  all  the  world  might 
be  called  to  a  knowledge  of  God  and  salvation 
through  faith  in  Him  who  is  the  very  Way,  the 
Truth,  and  the  Life,  might  be  oflEered  freely  to  all 
mankind — for  just  this  Israel  was  chosen  to  be  "  3, 
peculiar  people,"  and  its  prophets,  leaders,  and 
teachers  were  inspired  with  a  knowledge  of  the 
Most  High,  incomparable  in  clearness  and  truth  of 
perception  above  the  highest  thinkings  and  specula- 
tions of  the  wisest  sages  of  the  Gentile  world.  It 
need  not  and  ought  not  to  be  imagined  that  Israel 
was  alone  under  Divine  guardianship,  or  carried 
forward  in  its  history  alone  under  Divine  direction 
and  toward  the  fulfilment  of  the  Divine  purpose. 
It  need  not  and  should  not  be  supposed  that  the 
Divine  Spirit  withheld  His  inspiring  influences 
from  the  hearts  and  minds  of  all  the  rest  of  man- 
kind, necessarily  involving  the  monstrous  conclusion 
that  all  that  was  true  and  good  in  the  ancient  Gen- 


INSPIRATION  OF  OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY.   91 

tile  civilizations  were  from  some  source  absolutely 
independent  of  if  not  hostile  to  Him  as  the.  Spirit 
of  truth.  Rather,  let  it  be  clearly  understood  and  ad- 
mitted that  there  can  be  no  possible  enlightenment 
of  mind  or  elevation  of  heart  in  the  world  at  any 
time  or  anywhere  which  is  not  of  God  and  in  God. 
Let  it  be  admitted,  as  Clemens  Alexandrinus  in  the 
second  century  and  Abelard  in  the  eleventh  did  not 
hesitate  to  admit,  that  the  Greek  philosophers  as 
well  as  the  Jewish  prophets  might  be  truly  said  to 
have  been  inspired  ;  and  let  us  not  hesitate  to  add 
this  might  equally  be  said — nay,  it  must  be  said — 
of  all  the  masters  of  all  true  teaching,  whether  it 
be  of  poetry,  of  philosophy,  of  science,  as  well  as 
directly  and  specially  of  religion,  because  there  can 
be  no  truth  which  is  not  the  offspring  of  Divine 
intelligence.  But  still  the  conclusion  will  remain 
that  the  inspiration  of  Israel  was  unique — unique 
in  true  distinction  from  all  others  in  ancient  time — 
because  of  its  origin,  historically  traceable  in  special 
Divine  revelation  ;  because  of  its  being  purely  a 
spiritual  quickening  for  the  perception  of  the  truth 
of  Divine  righteousness  ;  and,  lastly,  because  it  was 
in  the  direct  line  of  preparation  for  the  full  Reve- 
lation of  God  promised  and  perfected  in  the  face  of 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ. 


THE 


WITNESS  OF  HISTORY  TO  THE  DIVINE 
PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 


CHAPTER  Yl. 

THE  WITNESS  OF  HISTORY  TO    THE  DIVINE  PERSONALITY 
OF   JESUS    CHRIST. 

The  Old  Testament  Scriptures  bear  witness  to  a 
long  era  in  human  history,  during  which  it  was  be- 
lieved by  the  people  of  one  nation  that  God,  the 
Sovereign  Creator  and  Ruler  of  the  world,  whom 
no  man  hath  seen  nor  can  see,  had,  by  a  special 
revelation  of  His  nature  and  will,  taken  them  into 
a  direct  covenanted  relationship  with  Himself,  and 
that  under  the  terms  of  this  covenant  they  were 
constituted  the  commissioned  conservators  of  the 
knowledge  and  worship  of  Him  on  earth,  and  wit- 
nesses to  His  righteous  government  among  the  chil- 
dren of  men. 

There  is,  however,  no  warrant  in  these  Scriptures 
for  the  inference  that  this  covenanted  relationship 
was  occasioned  by  any  such  local  or  racial  favoritism 
as  was  attributed  by  other  nations  of  antiquity  to 
their  tutelary  gods.  It  appears  rather  to  have  been 
a  stage  in  the  Divine  education  of  mankind,  a  part 
of  the  disciplinary  process  by  which  the  human 
family  over  all  the  earth  was  to  be  made  ultimately 


96    DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 

capable  of  receiving  and  apprehending  a  saving 
knowledge  of  truth  which  is  heavenly  and  eternal. 
This  was  not  always  clearly  understood  by  the  elect 
people,  but  it  was  the  doctrine  uniformly  and  con- 
sistently of  their  leaders  and  teachers.  In  the  very 
beginning  of  their  national  history,  when  the  an- 
nouncement was  first  made  to  them  of  their  Divine 
election  for  so  peculiar  a  place  and  purpose  among 
the  nations  of  the  world,  it  was  on  record  that  they 
were  clearly  forewarned  against  the  flattering  as- 
sumption that  they  were  entitled  to  such  distinction 
because  of  any  special  meritoriousness  on  their  part 
in  the  Divine  siglit  ;  and  it  was  in  uniform  con- 
sistency kept  constantly  before  them,  and  urged 
with  never-failing  earnestness  upon  them  by  their 
prophetic  teachers,  that  the  prerogatives  of  their 
election  were  much  more  those  of  responsibility 
than  of  favor,  and  were  intended  to  be  a  token  and 
proof  of  the  Divine  regard  in  its  ultimate  scope, 
much  more  for  all  mankind  than  for  them  exclu- 
sively. 

So  that  era  was,  in  the  very  terms  and  purposes 
of  its  constitution,  educative  and  disciplinary,  and 
therefore  it  could  not  be  final,  but  was  predestined 
to  close  with  the  attainment  of  its  object.  There- 
fore it  was  throughout  essentially  prophetic,  look- 
ing forward  always  to  and  yearning  for  a  dispensa- 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.    97 

tion  of  the  last  days,  when  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
earth  should  be  recognized  as  kingdoms  of  the  Lord 
and  His  anointed,  and  all  people  over  all  the  earth 
should  be  accepted  on  equal  terms  as  alike  entitled 
to  His  great  salvation. 

No  one  in  Christendom  needs  to  be  told  that  the 
era  in  which  we  are  living,  and  which  has  been  in 
existence  now  for  nearly  two  thousand  years,  is  one 
of  such  admitted  universal  right  to  Divine  guardian- 
ship and  favor  in  complete  fulfilment  of  the  ancient 
prophetic  expectation.  The  New  Testament  Scrip- 
tures, which  are  the  authoritative  records  of  the 
way  and  means  in  and  by  which  this  marvellous 
world-wide  change  was  effected,  have  their  place, 
therefore,  for  us  as  an  added  volume  of  Holy  Writ, 
and  are  believed  by  all  Christians  to  be  the  fullest 
and  final  expression  of  the  Divine  Spirit  for  the 
saving  enlightenment  of  the  human  family  on 
earth. 

If  we  had  not  a  lifelong  familiarity  with  the  fact, 
it  would  strike  us  as  a  marvel  almost  beyond  possi- 
bility that  a  volume  which  had  held  so  long  its 
unique  place  of  sacred  authority  for  the  teaching  of 
Divine  truth,  with  its  infallibility  thoroughly  ac- 
credited, could  have  been  superseded  by  new  writ- 
ings. And  certainly  it  would  have  been  impossible 
had  there  not  been  an  actual  historical  evolution,  of 


98    DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  GHEIST. 

which  the  new  writings  were  the  true  exposition 
and  expression. 

It  is  certain  beyond  a  possibility  of  donbt  or  ques- 
tion that  the  new  era  was  brought  into  effective  ex- 
istence by  the  teachings  and  life  of  a  Jewish  peasant, 
from  whose  birth  it  dates  its  beginning,  and  from 
whose  Person  it  takes  its  name.  No  fact  of  history 
is  so  indubitable,  so  absolutely  sure  as  this.  Re- 
ligious scepticism  has,  indeed,  sometimes  tried  to 
speak  in  doubtful  tones  concerning  the  historical 
verity  of  the  personal  life  seen  and  known  among 
men  as  that  of  Jesus  Christ  ;  but  the  intelligence 
even  of  infidelity  itself  has  refused  to  recognize  the 
doubt  as  tenable  on  any  substantial  ground,  and  has 
repudiated  the  attempt  to  account  for  Christianity 
without  Christ  as  but  a  stupid  conceit  of  ignorance 
itself.  So  absolutely  dependent  on  Christ,  so 
vitally  identified  with  Him  in  His  own  personal 
life  and  as  exemplified  in  His  own  words  and  deeds 
are  all  the  distinctive  characteristics  of  the  Chris- 
tian civilization,  that  the  profoundly  learned  and 
thoughtful  Baron  Bunsen  has  not  hesitated  to  de- 
clare that  "even  were  we  destitute  of  that  which 
we  actually  possess — a  veracious  tradition  respect- 
ing the  person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  the  history 
of  His  three  years  of  public  teaching — a  glance  at 
the  mental  development  of  humanity  during  the 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.    99 

last  eighteen  centuries  would  compel  us  to  assume 
the  existence  of  some  singularly  exalted,  holy  per- 
sonality as  the  cause  and  not  simply  the  occasion  of 
that  revolution  in  man's  view  of  the  universe.  "* 

The  faith  of  Christendom  has  long  been  settled 
in  the  only  warrantable  conclusion,  that  such  world- 
wide and  time-enduring  vitality  must  be  more  than 
human,  and  therefore  that  the  man  whose  personal 
life  was  so  demonstrably  the  fountain  source,  in 
ever-abounding  fulness  of  its  power,  must  have 
been  more  than  man.  Since  His  life  was  so  un- 
questionably complete  a  manifestation  of  the  Divine 
in  human  form,  there  must  be  as  unquestionable 
reason  to  say  of  Ilim  in  very  truth  that  in  Him 
dwelt  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily. 

A  conclusion  which  has  been  ratified  by  the  un- 
doubting  assent  of  more  than  fifty  generations 
would  seem  to  be  settled  beyond  reasonable  question  ; 
but  in  these  last  days,  when  every  point  in  religion 
is  0]3en  to  free  discussion,  there  is  a  small  but  self- 
confident  school  of  sceptical  thinkers  who  fancy 
that  it  may  be  evaded  by  a  new  theory.  Their 
theory  is  that  the  Personality,  which  has  been  the 
real  vital  force  in  all  the  progress  of  Christendom, 
is  not  and  has  never  been  the  historical  Jesus  of 

*  God  in  History,  vol.  iii.,  p.  7,  by  Baron  Bunsen.     S.  Wink- 
worth,  translator. 


100  DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 

Nazareth,  but  rather  an  ideal  Christ,  which  the 
faith  of  Christians  has  persistently  identified  with 
Him.  Those  holding  this  theory  are  earnest  in 
asserting  their  acceptance  of  the  historical  evidence 
in  proof  of  both  the  existence  and  the  moral  per- 
fection of  Jesus  as  a  man,  but  yet  more  earnest  in 
disbelieving  Him  to  have  been  in  any  true  sense 
more  than  man.  He  was,  they  say,  ' '  the  flower 
of  humanity,"  and  so,  worthy  of  the  admiring  love 
and  devotion  which  have  been  accorded  to  Him 
through  all  the  Christian  ages  ;  but  still  only  a 
"  flower  of  humanity,"  a  typical  example  of  human 
nature  at  its  best,  and  in  nowise  different  from  the 
rest  of  mankind  except  in  the  excellence  of  His 
human  character. 

This  theory  is  a  complete  reversion  of  cause  and 
effect  in  history,  since  it  puts  the  ideal  in  the  place 
of  the  Person  with  whom  it  is  identified,  and  at 
the  same  time  denies  to  that  Person  the  characteris- 
tic qualities  which  alone  rendered  the  ideal  possible. 

The  ideal  conception  of  human  perfection  is  a 
combination  in  imagination  of  all  the  best  qualities 
of  human  nature  in  perfect  vital  symmetry.  It 
need  not  designate  any  individual  as  its  personal 
subject,  but  may  be  a  purely  abstract  conception  of 
the  imagination.  But  this  is  not  the  way  in  which 
historical  ideals  are  formed,  nor  is  it  supposed  to 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.   101 

have  been  the  way  in  which  the  ideal  of  Christ 
was  formed  on  the  theory  under  consideration.  It 
is  admitted  that  from  the  beginning  of  creation 
down  to  the  introduction  of  the  Christian  era  in 
the  life  of  Jesus,  there  had  been  not  only  no  actual 
realization  of  the  ideal  in  any  human  life,  but  also 
that  the  life  which  He  lived  and  the  doctrines 
which  He  taught  were  transcendent  in  heavenly 
qualities  far  above  the  moral  and  spiritual  concep- 
tions which  mankind  had  before  entertained  or  been 
capable  of  forming. 

The  ideal  here,  therefore,  originated  in  the  ex- 
cellence of  the  actual  jjersonal  character.  This  was 
admittedly  so  pure  and  spotless,  so  pre-eminent  in 
qualities  admirable  and  lovable,  as  to  liave  drawn 
the  hearts  of  men  to  Jesus — first,  of  His  personal 
followers,  and  afterward  of  multitudes  through 
their  representation — as  they  have  been  attracted 
by  no  other  person  in  human  history.  And  so,  as 
time  went  on,  the  perfection  of  this  character  has 
been  more  and  more  contemplated,  and  in  the  con- 
templation more  and  more  admired,  and  in  the  ad- 
miration exaggerated,  until  it  came  to  be  taken  as 
altogether  superhuman,  and  Christian  believers 
would  consent  to  no  other  explanation  of  its  excel- 
lence than  that  Jesus  was  not  only  the  Christ  of 
prophecy,  but  verily  and  indeed  God  Plimself,  mani- 


102  DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 

f est  in  the  flesh.  ' '  This  ideal  of  Christ, ' '  says  one 
of  the  leaders  of  this  sceptical  school,  at  least  in  this 
country,  "  is  not  the  historic  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
Two  thousand  years  have  been  at  work  on  that 
ideal,  and  all  the  finest  and  highest  thinking  of  the 
ages  since  that  day  have  been  at  work  reshaping, 
purifying,  lifting,  beautifying  that  idea."* 

Now,  without  denying  at  all  the  idealizing  activ- 
ity which  has  been  at  work  upon  the  character  of 
Jesus  through  all  the  Christian  ages,  it  is  perfectly 
clear  that  His  character  in  His  actual  personal  life 
was  the  original  basis  of  this  ideal.  The  growth  of 
the  ideal,  even  though  it  be  a  growth,  had  yet  its 
genuine  root  in  His  pre-eminent  virtue.  Now  the 
truth,  which  has  been  realized  by  the  great  body 
of  Christian  believers,  is  that  unless  Christ  had  been 
from  the  first  helieved  to  have  heen  a  person  and  to 
have  led  a  life  of  Divine  origin  and  nature,  the 
ideal  of  Him  which  has  obtained  in  Christian  faith 
would  have  been  utterly  impossible. 

Let  us  consider  this. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  it  is  admitted  by  all, 
sceptics  as  well  as  beHevers,  that  in  the  ideal  of 
Christ  which  has  uniformly  prevailed,  the  chief 
reason  for  His  pre-eminent  attractiveness  has  been 

*  The  Irrepressible  Conflict  between  Two  World  Theories, 
by  Rev.  J.  Minot  Savage,  p.  53. 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.   103 

His  perfect  exemplification  of  benevolence  in  abso- 
lute unselfishness.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  this 
in  the  ideal.  But  how  is  it  possible  to  identify  this 
ideal  with  the  historic  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  unless 
His  actual  life  had  been  as  fully  and  truly  Divine 
as  it  is  represented  in  the  New  Testament  record  ? 
Divest  that  life,  as  these  theorists  would  divest  it, 
of  all  that  marks  it  in  the  evangelical  record  as 
Divine,  and  what  have  we  left  as  a  basis  for  the 
ideal  'i  lu  the  life  of  a  Galilean  peasant — thirty 
years  in  the  obscure  privacy  of  His  parents'  village 
home  and  three  years  as  a  wandering  preacher — • 
what  was  there,  in  condition  or  act,  to  mark  Him 
as  the  unique  example  of  self-sacrificing  benevo- 
lence ?  He  was  poor  ;  but  so  are  the  unknown 
millions  of  every  generation.  He  was  for  the  three 
years  of  His  wandering  life  without  a  home,  having 
not  a  place  that  He  could  claim  as  His  own  to  lay 
His  head  ;  but  myriads  of  homeless  wanderers — we 
might  even  say,  in  simple  truth,  of  tramps — have 
been  in  like  privation  and  need.  He  was  amiable 
in  all  His  personal  intercourse,  ever  ready  to  meet 
the  needy  and  the  suffering  with  sympathetic  words 
and  helpful  deeds  ;  but  denying  and  excluding  His 
miraculous  beneficence,  what  recorded  act  in  all 
His  life  is  found  to  mark  Him  as  the  exemplar  of 
^elf-sacrificing  benevolence  ;  or,  indeed,  as  an  ex- 


104    DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST 

ample  of  benevolence  in  any  way  distinguished  from 
the  many  who  are  proved  to  be  kind  and  sympa- 
thetic wherever  and  whenever  there  is  human  need  ? 

No.  The  plain,  undeniable  truth  is  that  if  Jesus 
were  a  mere  man,  there  was  no  act  of  His  recorded 
life  to  show  that  He  was  or  could  have  been  re- 
garded as  a  man  in  any  way  distinguished  for  pre- 
eminent goodness.  Granting  that  He  was  not  only 
amiable,  without  a  taint  of  malice,  but  also  so  free 
from  notable  fault  of  any  kind  that  He  might  safely 
put  the  challenge,  "  Which  of  you  convinceth  Me 
of  sin  ?"  yet  even  in  that  respect  His  character  was 
not  apparently  so  superior  to  many  others  as  to  have 
marked  His  life  as  exceptional,  much  less  as  unique. 
Goodness  is  not  pretentious  ;  it  vaunteth  not  itself  ; 
it  proves  its  blamelessness,  not  by  extraordinary 
manifestations,  but  simply  by  fitly  meeting  each 
little  occasion  in  every-day  life  ;  and  there  were, 
no  doubt,  many  a  man  in  Christ's  day,  as  there 
certainly  are  in  ours,  of  whom  it  could  in  truth  be 
said,  even  by  his  most  intimate  companions,  that 
they  had  never  seen  a  fault  in  him,  and  yet  have 
been  without  the  least  claim  to  distinction. 

"What  was  it,  then,  in  the  actual  life  of  Christ 
that  made  Him,  first,  in  tlie  eye  of  His  personal 
followers,  and  ever  since  in  the  judgment  of  the 
civilized  world,  the  personification  of  self-sacrificing 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CUEIST.    105 

benevolence,  the  very  type  of  the  enthusiasm  of 
hiiinanity  ?  Is  it  claimed  that  it  was  the  altruistic 
tone  and  spirit  of  His  teachings  ?  Granting  all 
that  can  be  said  in  appreciation  of  the  helpfulness, 
the  uplifting,  the  ennobling,  and  exalting  character 
of  the  doctrine  which  came  from  His  lips,  as  well 
as  of  the  originality  and  winning  attractiveness  of 
His  "  method,"  the  requirement  of  the  case  is  still 
not  met  ;  for  the  ideal  of  Christ  is  not  only  an  ideal 
of  a  teacher,  but  the  ideal  of  a  person,  emphatically 
and  uniquely  of  a  person.  It  has  been  said  over 
and  over  again,  and  repeated  so  often  simply  be- 
cause it  is  so  emphatically  true,  that  Christianity  is 
not  a  philosophy,  but  a  life  ;  and  this  is  as  true  of  its 
originating  ideal  as  of  its  exemplary  adaptation  in 
present  experience. 

There  is  yet  another  element  in  the  ideal  to  which 
the  unparalleled  hold  of  Christ  upon  the  grateful 
love  and  devotion  of  mankind  has  ever  been  chiefly 
due,  which  is  equally  dependent  on  faith  in  His 
Divine  nature,  and  impossible  without  it.  By 
every  Christian  believer,  through  all  the  Christian 
ages,  the  uppermost  thought  in  the  contemplation 
of  Jesus  Christ,  and  His  claim  to  perpetual  and  uni- 
versal gratitude,  has  ever  been  the  thought  of  Him 
as  the  suffei'ing  Saviour.  But  how  could  this 
thought  have  originated,  how  could  it  ever  have 


106    DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 

found  place  in  the  ideal  of  Him,  if  Jesus  had  been 
supposed,  from  the  first  knowledge  or  impression 
of  llis  earthly  life,  to  have  been  only  a  man  ?  In 
that  case  there  could  have  been  no  possibility  of 
attributing  to  Him  any  special  condescension  or 
voluntary  self-renunciation  in  His  low  estate,  His 
privations,  or  even  His  persecutions.  He  was  but 
a  peasant  of  Galilee,  and  His  poverty  was  but  the 
common  lot  of  His  class.  H  He  met  with  opposi- 
tion from  the  rulers  of  the  nation  in  His  public 
ministry,  this  was  only  what  might  reasonably  have 
been  looked  for  by  one  making  and  publicly  assert- 
ing his  pretensions  ;  and  even  His  final  trial  and 
execution  was  but  a  contingency,  the  risk  of  which 
He  might  have  been  willing  to  run  for  the  sake  of 
the  temporary  notoriety  and  influence  which  His 
claim  to  the  Messiahship  had  secured.  It  is  shock- 
ing to  Christian  sensibility  to  speak  in  this  way  of 
Him  whom  Christian  faith  ever  regards  as  the 
adorable  Redeemer  ;  but  there  is  no  possibility  in 
reason  to  see  how  He  could  be  spoken  or  thought 
of  otherwise,  if  He  were  not  believed  to  have  been 
of  celestial  origin  and  Divine  nature.  As  man 
merely,  His  claim  upon  the  homage  and  devotion 
of  other  men,  or  even  their  common  gratitude, 
would  be  and  must  from  the  first  have  been  felt 
to  be  decidedly  inferior  to  those  which  had  for  cen- 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CUEIST.    107 

turies  before  His  day  been  accorded  by  millions  in 
the  great  Indian  Empire,  still  further  east,  to  their 
reputed  Messiah,  Gautama  ;  for  the  record  of  the 
life  of  that  Eastern  sage  was  one  of  poverty,  of 
lonely  wanderings,  of  pure  self-abnegation,  of 
thought  only  for  others  and  goodness  toward  others, 
not  surpassed  in  the  recorded  personal  ministry  of 
Jesus,  and  far  exceeding  it  by  many  years  in  dura- 
tion ;  and  he  was,  at  the  same  time,  the  undisputed 
son  of  a  prince,  to  whom  therefore  all  this  privation 
and  suffering  were  the  voluntary  assumption  of  his 
own  purely  unselfish  benevolence.  Even  in  their 
own  national  history,  the  people  of  whom  Jesus  was 
born  and  among  whom  He  lived  had  an  example 
of  a  suffering  prophet  with  which  that  of  Jesus 
could  bear  no  comparison.  Jeremiah,  in  their  his- 
torical record  and  tradition,  had  for  centuries  held 
the  place  of  the  great  sufferer,  and  with  unques- 
tionable reason.  In  the  faithful  execution  of  his 
Divine  commission  to  "  pull  down,  pluck  up,  and 
destroy,"  for  more  than  forty  years  he  was  sub- 
jected, by  God-defying  rulers  and  a  rebellious  and 
stiff-necked  people,  to  persecutions,  to  indignities, 
privations,  tortures,  incomparably  more  protracted 
and  unendurable  than  any  which  the  record  or 
tradition  connected  with  the  experience  of  Jesus ; 
and,  in  the  final  end,  the  image  of  Jeremiah  stoned 


108   DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 

to  death  by  liis  coiintrymen,  violently  denouncing 
liim  as  a  blasphemer,  was  quite  as  replete  with  the 
pathos  of  humiliation  and  pain,  to  entitle  him  to 
be  regarded  as  the  great  sufferer,  as  that  of  Jesus 
expiring,  by  sentence  of  Roman  law,  on  the  cross. 

No  ;  it  could  not  have  been  possible  for  such  an 
ideal  as  that  of  the  Christ,  the  Saviour  of  mankind 
—  Saviour  not  only  by  the  purity  of  His  life  and 
the  beneficent  character  and  tendency  of  His  teach- 
ings, but  also  and  even  more  truly  by  His  personal 
condescension,  humiliation,  and  suffering — it  could 
not  have  been  possible  for  such  an  ideal  to  have 
been  formed  on  the  basis  of  the  actual  character 
and  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  unless  He  had  been, 
from  the  first,  believed  with  assured  faith  to  have 
been  more  than  man.  The  voluntary  condescen- 
sion which  was  attributed  to  Him  was  such  as  no 
earthly  king  could  claim  to  parallel  ;  but  it  was 
possible — possible  in  Him  or  possible  its  grateful 
recognition  by  Christians  believers — only  on  the 
assurance  of  a  well-grounded  faith  in  His  eternal 
and  Divine  pre-existence.  The  suffering,  with  the 
endurance  of  which  His  image  has  ever  been 
stamped  in  the  mind  and  heart  of  Christendom, 
could  not  have  been  attributed  to  Him  unless  His 
Person  had  been  enshrined  in  the  faith  of  Christen- 
dom as  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away  the  sins 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.    109 

of  the  world,  the  Divine  Redeemer,  "  Who,  being 
in  the  form  of  God,  thought  it  not  robbery  to  be 
equal  with  God,  but  made  Himself  of  no  reputa- 
tion, and  took  upon  Him  the  form  of  a  servant,  and 
was  made  in  the  likeness  of  men  ;  and  being  found 
in  fashion  as  a  man,  He  humbled  Himself  and  be- 
came obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the 
cross."  "  Surely  He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and 
carried  our  sorrows."  "  He  hath  redeemed  us 
from  the  curse  of  the  law,  being  made  a  curse  for 
us."  "  He  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions, 
He  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities  ;  the  chastisement 
of  our  peace  was  upon  Him,  and  by  His  stripes  we 
are  healed."  "  He  hath  reconciled  us  in  the  body 
of  His  flesh,  through  death,  to  present  us  holy  and 
unblamable  and  unreprovable  in  His  sight."  It 
is  because  and  only  because  the  trusting  faith  and 
grateful  and  loving  adoration  of  Christian  hearts 
has  ever  found  true  expression  in  such  utterances 
as  these  that  the  ideal  of  the  typical  Sufferer,  with 
whom  no  other  in  all  history  could  for  a  moment 
be  thought  of  as  comparable,  has  ever  been,  in  all 
ages  and  among  all  people,  in  the  light  of  Christian 
civilization,  accepted  as  identified  with  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  and  possibly  identified  only  with  Him. 

Now,  it  is  certain  beyond  question  that  the  ideal 
involving  this  identification  had  taken  possession  of 


110  DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST. 

the  mind  of  incipient  Christendom  before  the  books 
of  the  New  Testament  were  written,  for  it  is  very 
clear  that  the  Christ  of  the  ideal  is,  in  every  char- 
acteristic and  feature,  the  Jesus  of  Nazareth  whose 
person  is  portrayed  and  whose  acts  and  teachings 
are  recorded  by  the  evangelists.  That  these  evan- 
gelists were  the  personal  followers  and  friends  of 
Jesus  ;  that  they  knew  Him  very  intimately,  and 
had  full  and  accurate  knowledge  of  His  life  in  all 
its  aspects  and  relations  ;  that  their  purpose,  in  all 
sincerity,  was  to  represent  Him  just  as  He  appeared 
and  approved  Himself  to  be  in  His  actual  life,  and 
therefore  that  the  impression  of  Him  in  their  narra- 
tives is  an  accurate  reproduction  of  the  impression 
which  was  made  by  Him  in  person  upon  those  who 
lived  with  Him  and  knew  Him,  are  conclusions 
which  are  justified  by  every  accredited  test  of  his- 
torical evidence.  But  even  if  the  authenticity  of 
the  Gospels  were  not  so  abundantly  substantiated  as 
it  is  on  historical  ground,  their  historical  truth 
would  still  be  determined  beyond  question  by  the 
accuracy  of  the  correspondence  between  fact  accord- 
ing to  their  history  and  the  ideal,  which  could  have 
had  its  basis  only  in  such  fact.  The  Person  whose 
character  and  teachings  are  portrayed  in  their  his- 
torical narratives  is  beyond  question  the  personal- 
ity of  the  ideal.     The  only  alternative  possibly  ad- 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.    Ill 

missible  in  the  case,  therefore,  is  just  this  :  either 
they  or  some  equally  iUiterate  persons,  shortly  after 
the  death  of  Jesus,  created  the  ideal,  or  else  the 
Gospels  are  accurately  true  to  the  life.  If  we  give 
the  preference  to  the  first  of  these  alternatives,  we 
are  met  by  all  the  improbabilities  which  were  felt 
and  admitted  to  be  insuperable  by  one  so  indifferent 
to  faith  and  inclined  to  sceptical  speculations  as 
Rousseau,  when  he  wrote,  in  his  "Emile,"  his 
well-known  expression  of  the  impression  made  upon 
him  by  the  evangelical  records  :  "  It  is  more  in- 
conceivable that  a  number  of  persons  should  agree 
to  write  such  a  history,  than  that  one  should  fur- 
nish the  subject  of  it.  The  Jewish  authors  were 
incapable  of  the  diction  and  strangers  to  the  moral- 
ity contained  in  the  Gospel.  The  marks  of  its 
truth  are  so  striking  and  inimitable,  that  the  invent- 
or would  be  a  more  astonishing  character  than  the 
hero."  To  adopt  the  other  alternative,  and  to  hold 
an  assured  conviction  that  Jesus  was,  in  person  and 
character,  exactly  what  the  evangelists  represent 
Him  to  have  been,  and  therefore  Son  of  God  and 
man,  perfect  in  both  His  Divine  and  human  natures, 
is  but  to  give  our  honest  and  reasonable  credence 
to  fact,  which  more  than  any  other  fact  or  series  of 
facts  in  history  has  the  attestation  of  all  the  creden- 
tials by  which  historical  truth  is  demonstrated,  ac- 


112   DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS   CHRIST. 

cording  to  the  rule  for  such  demonstration  as  for- 
mulated by  Mr.  Huxley  :  "  The  occurrence  of  his- 
torical facts  is  said  to  be  demonstrated  when  the 
evidence  that  they  happened  is  of  such  a  character 
as  to  render  the  assumption  that  they  did  not  hap- 
pen in  the  highest  degree  improbable." 

Yes,  the  faith  of  Christendom  is  not  only  a  re- 
ligious, but  as  truly  a  reasonable  faith.  It  is  not 
mere  pious  sentiment,  much  less  is  it  fanatical 
credulity.  It  is  grounded  in  thoroughly  substan- 
tiated historical  fact — fact  which  lacks  no  point  of 
evidence  by  which  the  truth  of  history  is  univer- 
sally admitted  to  be  demonstrated.  It  is  justified 
by  the  well-considered,  sane,  sober  judgment  of 
the  most  honest,  intelligent,  and  acute  thinkers 
and  scholars,  with  very  few  exceptions,  in  all  the 
Christian  ages.  It  is  the  formulated  consensus  of 
millions  upon  millions  of  rejoicing  believers,  in 
accumulating  numbers,  out  of  every  nation  and 
race,  as  time  since  the  day  of  Christ  has  gone  and 
continues  to  go  on.  There  are,  it  is  true,  as  there 
have  been  in  every  generation  of  the  past,  some 
who  can  persuade  themselves  that  the  evidence  is 
insufficient.  There  will  always  be,  no  doubt,  or 
at  least  until  the  fulness  of  the  predicted  time, 
when  there  shall  be  none  to  say,  "  Know  ye  the 
Lord,"    constitutional    sceptics,    and   those    whose 


DIVINE  PERSONALITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST.    113 

educational  bias  inclines  their  minds  more  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  difficulties  of  belief  than  to  a  due 
appreciation  of  the  reasons  for  faith  ;  but  still  the 
clear,  positive,  unfaltering  voice  of  history  concern- 
ing Jesus  Christ  has  been  in  all  the  ages  past,  is 
now,  and  is  certain  to  be  in  all  the  future,  "  Truly, 
this  man  was  the  Son  of  God." 


A  Living  Consciousness  of  Communion 

WITH  THE  Living  God-The  God  of 

Righteousness  and  of  Love- 

The  Present  Need  of  the 

Church,  and  Its  True 

Inspiration. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Conclusion : 

A  LIVING  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  COMMUNION  WITH  THE 
LIVING  GOD — THE  GOD  OF  KIGHTEOUSNESS  AND  OF 
LOVE — THE  PRESENT  NEED  OF  THE  CHUKCH,  AND 
ITS   TRUE   INSPIRATION. 

It  has  been  the  single  aim  of  the  author  in  the 
preceding  chapters  to  make  it  clear  that  the  history 
which  is  recorded  and  exemplified  in  the  Scriptures 
of  both  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  is  true  his- 
tory, which  means  simply  that  there  has  been,  in 
the  actual  life  of  the  world,  such  an  era,  with  such 
a  people,  under  such  government,  and  led  and 
taught  by  such  persons  as  are  described  in  the  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  ;  and  that  the  era  in  which 
we  are  now  living  had  its  origin  in  the  Person 
whose  history  is  recorded  and  whose  teachings  are 
correctly  reproduced  in  the  New  Testament. 

We  have  said  but  little  of  the  special  inspiration 
of  these  books.  But  this  must  not  be  understood 
as  implying  that  we  are  in  doubt  concerning  such 
inspiration.     We  would  as  soon  think  of  doubting 


118  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

the  poetical  inspiration  of  Homer,  Dante,  or  Mil- 
ton, or  the  dramatic  inspiration  of  ^schylus, 
Sophocles,  or  Shakespeare,  or  the  philosophical 
inspiration  of  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle,  or  Kant, 
as  of  doubting  the  religious  inspiration  of  Moses 
and  the  prophets  in  the  Old  Testament,  or  of  the 
apostles  of  Jesus  Christ  under  Him  as  their  Lord 
and  Master,  and  through  the  enlightening  guidance 
of  His  Holy  Spirit,  in  the  New  Testament.  If 
there  are  persons  who  deny  or  doubt  this  inspira- 
tion, they  simply  illustrate  the  possibility  of  abnor- 
mal dissent  from  the  general  consensus  of  both 
Judaic  and  Christian  intelligence  ;  it  proves  such 
persons  to  be  lacking  in  the  religious  sense  and 
spiritual  perception,  just  as  the  failure  of  one  to 
perceive  the  inspiration  of  the  masters  in  poetry  and 
philosophy  would  prove  his  lack  of  the  poetic  or 
philosophic  sense.  The  inspiration  of  sacred  Scrip- 
ture, in  the  religious  sphere  of  thought  and  feeling, 
has  long  since  been  settled  by  precisely  the  same 
tests,  and  there  is  no  derogation  of  due  regard  for 
dogmatic  authority  in  saying  also  it  has  been  de- 
termined in  the  same  way.  It  was  the  general  con- 
sensus of  the  Jewish  mind,  under  Divine  illumina- 
tion, that  determined  belief  in  the  inspiration  of 
the  books  admitted  into  the  Old  Testament  canon  ; 
there  is  no  trace  of  such  determination  by  synodi- 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  119 

cal  authority.  The  same  consensus  of  Christian 
thought  and  feeling  in  the  early  centuries  of  Chris- 
tendom determined  belief  in  the  inspiration  of  the 
books  in  the  New  Testament  canon.  Possibly, 
probably  as  some  think,  the  use  of  the  word  "  canon" 
by  the  early  Christian  writers  was  inherited  from 
the  usage  of  the  Alexandrine  grammarians,  "  who 
designated  l)y  the  term  such  of  the  classic  authors 
as  they  judged  to  be  models  of  excellence.  "*  Cer- 
tainly there  was  no  synodical  authority  till  very 
near  the  close  of  the  fourth  century,  when  the 
Council  of  Carthage  decreed  that  no  books  should 
be  read  in  the  congregations  of  the  Church,  "  under 
the  name  of  Divine  Scriptures,"  except  those  which 
we  now  have  in  the  Old  and  New  Testament 
canon. 

But  whatever  opinion  may  be  held  concerning 
the  method  of  scriptural  inspiration,  or  the  precise 
ground  on  which  its  authority  is  to  be  recognized, 
is  of  comparative  unimportance.  The  inspiration 
of  the  sacred  books  is  not  of  the  letter,  but  of  the 
spirit.  Before  the  inspiration  of  the  books,  or 
even  of  the  authors  of  these  books,  was  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  actual  historij,  which  is  traceable  to 
positive  Divine  revelations  ;    and  these  books  are 

*  Professor  Ladd,  Doctrine  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures,  vol.  i., 
p.  638. 


120  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED, 

true,  or  truly  inspired,  only  as  they  are  trustworthy 
records  and  expressions  of  such  revelations. 

This  being  taken  as  true  historically,  it  follows  as 
an  assured  conclusion  of  faith  that  God,  whom  no 
man  hath  seen  nor  can  see,  but  who  made  the 
worlds,  and  in  and  by  whom  we  and  all  things  con- 
sist, has  never  left  Himself  without  witness  in  this 
world  of  ours.  Having  made  us  for  Himself,  He 
has  endowed  us  with  a  religious  sense,  with  spirit- 
ual instincts  and  aspirations,  to  lead  men  every- 
where to  feel  after  Him,  if  haply  they  may  find 
Him.  He  has  endowed  man  with  reason,  to  see  in 
His  works  evidences  of  His  existence  and  His  gov- 
ernment of  the  world.  He  has  given  knowledge 
and  wisdom  by  His  good  Spirit,  enkindling  intelli- 
gence, quickening  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong  in 
good  and  honest  hearts,  and  animating  such  hearts 
with  yearning  desire  for  true  knowledge  of  Him 
and  communion  with  Him. 

But,  over  and  above  all  this.  He  has  constituted 
for  Himself  a  chosen  body  of  witnesses,  to  receive 
and  preserve  His  special  revelations  of  saving  truth, 
to  instruct  and  discipline  human  society  in  the 
knowledge  and  practice  of  it,  to  bring  all  mankind 
within  the  enjoyment  of  its  enlightening,  purifying, 
and  uplifting  influences,  and  to  carry  forward  the 
great  human  family  through  the  life  of  this  lower 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  121 

sphere,  in  steady  advancement  toward  fully  devel- 
oped fitness  for  the  eternal  life  above,  which  is  its 
true  destiny. 

This  body,  under  the  old  dispensation,  was  the 
chosen,  covenanted  people,  organized  as  the  nation 
of  ancient  Israel  ;  and  to  it  was  specially  committed 
the  revelation  of  His  personal  nature  and  His  ab- 
solute and  eternal  righteousness.  "  Ye  are  My 
witnesses,  saith  the  Lord,  and  My  servant,  whom  I 
have  chosen  :  that  ye  may  know  and  believe  Me, 
and  understand  that  1  am  He  :  before  Me  there 
was  no  God  formed,  neither  shall  there  be  after 
Me.  I,  even  I,  am  the  Lord  ;  and  beside  Me  there 
is  no  Saviour.  1  have  declared,  and  I  have  saved, 
and  1  have  shewed,  and  there  was  no  strange  God 
among  you  :  therefore  ye  are  My  witnesses,  saith 
the  Lord,  and  I  am  God."* 

No  other  religion  in  ancient  time  had  such  a  con- 
ception of  the  Divine  nature  or  the  Divine  govern- 
ment. The  religions  of  the  ancients  that  are  known 
to  lis  were  inspired  chiefly  by  a  sense  of  man's 
wretchedness  under  the  ills  of  life,  its  calamitous 
and  destructive  adversities,  rather  than  by  a  convic- 
tion of  its  sinfulness  or  aspiration  for  perfect  right- 
eousness.    The  religion  of  ancient  Egypt  seems  to 

*  Isa.  43  :  10-13. 


122  INSPIBATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

Lave  looked  chiefly  to  consolation  bj  counteracting 
care  against  the  destructive  effects  of  the  great 
final  catastrophe.  Their  principal  ritual  was  known 
as  the  Booh  of  the  Dead,  and  in  both  its  doctrine 
of  metempsychosis  for  the  soul  and  its  elaborate 
methods  for  embalming  and  entombing  the  body, 
it  provided,  as  far  as  priestly  doctrine  and  rites  can 
provide,  against  the  destruction  of  either  the  physi- 
cal or  spiritual  parts  of  man's  nature.  The  religions 
of  Persia  and  farther  India  were  directed  exclu- 
sively against  human  suffering  and  sorrow,  and  in 
the  one  case  prescribed  for  consolation  a  philosophy 
of  dualism,  and  in  the  other,  of  complete  extirpa- 
tion of  sensibility  to  evil  by  the  subjugation  of  per- 
sonal desire  and  will.  In  neither  of  these  does 
there  seem  to  have  been  any  formulated  apprehen- 
sion either  of  righteousness,  as  conformity  to  the 
perfectly  and  eternally  righteous  nature  and  will  of 
the  sovereign  God,  or  of  sin,  as  treason  to  11  im  and 
rebellion  against  His  supreme  dominion.  In  later 
times  the  Greeks  had  no  sense,  or  at  least  no  formu- 
lated sense  of  righteousness  other  than  as  conform- 
ity to  harmonious  truth  and  beauty,  and  no  sense 
of  sin  other  than  as  unseemly  divergence  from  such 
conformity  and  ungraceful  violation  of  its  princi- 
ples. In  the  Roman  religion  the  theory  of  right- 
eousness was  simply  that  of  obedience  to  the  law  of 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  123 

the  State,  and  of  sin  as  treason  simply  in  that  sense 
and  relation.  But  to  ancient  Israel  was  committed 
the  revelation  of  God  as  a  Personal  Being,  and  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  righteousness  as  His 
law  ;  and  the  one  purpose  of  their  history  seems  to 
have  been  the  education  of  the  human  conscience 
in  a  clear  recognition  of  the  fact  that  this  world  is, 
in  very  truth,  a  province  of  the  Divine  govern- 
ment, and  the  inspiration  of  men  with  a  true  sense 
of  their  obligation  to  conform  in  all  its  relations  to 
the  Divine  will  and  aim  for  the  promotion  of  the 
Divine  glory. 

When  the  fulness  of  time  had  come,  the  revelation 
of  the  great  salvation,  for  which  this  educational 
history  had  been  appointed  and  carried  forward,  was 
made  in  the  Person  of  the  Only  Begotten  Son  of 
God,  by  a  real  participation  and  experience  of 
human  hfe,  with  its  infirmities,  and  of  death,  with  its 
natural  consequences  and  its  redemptive  deliver- 
ance. In  His  life  and  teachings  the  revelation  of 
Divine  righteousness  was  supplemented  by  opening 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  men  to  see  and  feel  the 
fulness  of  grace  in  the  Divine  love.  He  main- 
tained, without  abatement  of  one  jot  or  tittle,  the 
perfection  of  the  law  in  its  own  intent  and  pur- 
pose ;  He,  more  clearly  than  any  before  Him,  as- 
serted and  insisted  upon  a  standard  of  absolute  sin- 


Ui  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

lessness  as  the  only  standard  possibly  consistent  with 
the  essential  and  eternal  perfection  of  the  Divine 
righteousness  ;  but  in  entire  consistency  with  this 
standard  brought  out — so  brought  out  as  to  stir  the 
minds  and  enkindle  the  hearts  of  men  in  its  appre- 
hension and  to  flood  the  world  with  its  light — the 
glorious  truth  that  God  can  be  just  and  yet  justify 
the  sinner.  "  God  so  loved  the  world,  that  He 
gave  His  only  begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  believ- 
eth  in  Him  should  not  perish,  but  have  everlasting 
life."*  This  was  His  message,  this  constituted  His 
great  revelation.  The  apprehension  of  the  truth  of 
this,  as  exemplified  in  His  Person  and  expounded 
and  illustrated  in  His  teachings,  was  at  once  felt  to 
be,  and  has,  in  fact,  proved  to  be  the  salvation  of 
the  world. 

So  the  Christian  Church  took  the  place  of  ancient 
Israel  as  the  Body  of  Witnesses  for  God  in  the 
world.  Such  it  was  recognized  and  appointed  by 
the  Saviour  Himself  to  be,  when  Pie  gave  the  great 
commission  to  His  apostles  by  which  they  were  to 
go  forth  and  convert  the  world  ;  for  just  as  in  the 
old  dispensation  it  had  been  said  by  Jehovah  to  the 
elect  people,  "Ye  are  My  witnesses,"  so  now  He 
said  to  them,  "  Ye  shall  be  witnesses  unto  Me  ;" 

*  St.  John  3  :  16. 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  125 

and  though  this  was  spoken  to  the  apostles  directly, 
it  was  clearly  not  intended  to  be  limited  in  its  ap- 
plication to  them  personally,  but  rather  was  said  to 
them  as  representing  the  perpetual  and  universal 
ministry  of  the  Church  ;  for  He  added,  "  In  Jeru- 
salem, and  in  all  Judea,  and  in  Samaria,  and  unto 
the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth."* 

This,  then,  is  the  special  function  of  the  Church, 
to  be  in  the  world,  everywhere  and  in  all  time,  the 
authoritative  witness  for  God  in  Christ,  to  bring  all 
men  to  the  knowledge  of  Him  and  salvation  through 
Him. 

This  means  to  witness,  first,  to  the  truth  as  it  is 
in  Him,  to  tell  it  out  among  the  heathen  and  all 
people  till  the  end  of  time,  that  the  Son  of  God  is 
come  and  hath  given  unto  us  eternal  life  by  the 
remission  of  sins.  In  bearing  this  witness,  the 
Church  stands  before  the  world  with  a  claim  to 
accreditation  which  is  indisputable.  It  holds  from 
Christ  Himself  the  comnn'ssion  to  go  into  all  the 
world  and  preach  His  Gospel  ;  it  has  been  consti- 
tuted for  this  purpose  the  "  pillar  and  ground," 
the  conservator  and  herald  of  the  truth  which  that 
Gospel  comprises  in  its  fulness,  and  it  traces  its 
title  to  this  commission  in  historical  lines  and  by 

*  Acts  1  :  8. 


126  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

historical  evidences  which  fully  meet  all  the  tests 
that  are  universally  accepted  as  demonstrative  of 
historical  certitude.  These  evidences  are,  more- 
over, so  interwoven  with  the  threads  and  identified 
with  every  shade  of  history  as  to  be  not  weakened, 
but  accumulatively  strengthened  in  the  long  prog- 
ress of  time.  We,  who  have  our  place  in  this  gen- 
eration, at  a  remove  of  nearly  two  thousand  years 
from  the  original  grant  of  the  commission,  can  bear 
our  testimony  with  tne  confident  conviction  of 
being  sustained  by  more  than  fifty  generations  of 
authorized  and  accredited  witnesses,  and  in  bearing 
our  testimony  we  can  feel  that  we  are  but  uniting 
with  the  acclaiming  voice  of  this  mighty  host  in 
confessing  the  incarnate  Christ  as  the  only  begotten 
of  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth  ;  for  it  is  ever 
to  be  remembered  this  faith,  though  thoroughly 
accepted  by  us  individually,  is  not  our  individual 
faith.  It  is  the  faith  of  the  great  Body,  which  we 
have  received  from  the  Body  and  through  partici- 
pation in  its  life.  In  confessing  the  faith  we  give 
utterance  to  no  new  creed.  We  recognize  the  fact 
that  it  is  the  creed  which  not  only  we,  but  our 
fathers  also,  and  their  fathers,  and  fathers'  fathers 
through  the  ages  all  along  have  believingly  repeated 
as  the  declaration  of  faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  So  our 
belief  in  Christ  has  come  to  us  in  such  wise  that  it 


1N8PIBATI0N  A  PRESENT  NEED  127 

necessarily  involves  the  holding  to  this  hereditary 
line  of  its  transmission,  and  every  generation  since 
the  time  of  Christ  on  earth  has  received  it,  whether 
by  birth  or  conversion,  under  the  same  necessity 
and  obligation.  If  it  be  thought  that  the  first  cen- 
tury was  exceptional  in  this  respect,  that  in  tracing 
up  the  line  we  reach  there  an  arid  and  dark  waste 
of  a  hundred  years  more  or  less,  wherein  no  trace 
is  found,  it  must  be  remembered  that  there  never 
was  or  could  have  been  a  moment  when  the  Chris- 
tian faith  was  proposed  to  men  other  than  as  a  his- 
torical faith,  and  never  a  person  received  into  the 
Christian  Church  otherwise  than  by  a  baptism 
which  meant  for  him  and  was  received  and  recog- 
nized by  him  as  putting  him  into  a  real  vital  con- 
nection with  Jesus  the  Christ,  who  had  been  born 
by  Divine  incarnation  into  the  world  and  had  lived, 
died,  and  risen  again  for  its  redemption.  But  to 
witness  for  Christ  means  more  than  to  bear  an  evi- 
dential witness.  It  is  a  witness,  even  more  explic- 
itly and  emphatically  than  that  of  the  elect  in  the 
elder  dispensation,  to  the  Divine  righteousness. 
"  Think  not,"  said  the  Lord  Himself  to  His  disci- 
ples— "  think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the  law 
or  the  prophets  :  I  am  not  come  to  destroy,  but  to 
fulfil."*  And  yet  further, f  "  Whosoever  there- 
*  St.  Matt.  5  :  17.  f  Id.  vs.  19,  20. 


138  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

fore  shall  break  one  of  these  least  commandments, 
and  shall  teach  men  so,  he  shall  be  called  the  least 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  :  but  whosoever  shall  do 
and  teach  them,  the  same  shall  be  called  great  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  For  I  say  unto  yon,  that 
except  your  righteousness  shall  exceed  the  right- 
eousness of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no 
case  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. ' '  The  reve- 
lation of  Divine  grace  which  was  made  through 
Him  did  not,  in  any  particular  or  degree,  detract 
from  the  sense  of  Divine  righteousness  which  it  had 
been  the  purpose  of  the  old  economy  to  educate  in 
the  human  conscience.  Far,  indeed,  from  this  its 
purpose  and  effect.  It  magnified  the  law,  and  made 
it  honorable.  It  sealed  and  fixed,  beyond  the  pos- 
sibility of  change  or  unsettlement  in  the  conscience 
of  mankind,  the  conviction  that  the  righteousness 
of  God  endureth  forever  ;  that  it  is  as  absolutely 
immutable  as  the  very  nature  and  being  of  God 
Himself.  It  showed  not  only  how  infinitely  above 
any  possible  touch  of  wrong  or  impurity  that  right- 
eousness is  in  its  essential  qualities,  but  also  how 
thoroughly  searching  and  all-including  are  its  re- 
quirements, piercing  even  to  the  joints  and  marrow, 
and  trying  the  very  reins  of  the  heart.  So 
the  Christian  Church  came  for  this  purpose, 
with    more    accredited    authority    and    far    more 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  139 

effective  power,  into  the  place  of  the  elect  people, 
and  continued  and  fulfilled  the  function  with  which 
that  people  had  heen  charged  of  old  to  proclaim 
and  to  vindicate  the  righteousness  of  God  in  the 
world.  But  over  and  above  all  else,  the  witness  of 
the  Church  for  Christ  means  the  accredited  assur- 
ance which  it  was  commissioned  to  give  to  the  world 
and  show  forth  in  it,  of  the  infinite  fulness  of  the 
Divine  love.  It  is  impossible  for  us,  whose  lives 
have  been  from  the  first  dawn  of  our  consciousness 
in  the  full  light  of  this  glorious  truth  of  the  Chris- 
tian revelation,  which,  by  reason  of  this,  distin- 
guishes Christendom  from  the  world  in  ignorance 
of  it  and  even  from  the  people  to  whom  were 
granted  the  partial  disclosures  of  the  Old  Testament 
revelation.  The  thought  of  God  to  the  heathen 
mind  is  emphatically  thought  from  the  visions  of 
the  night — dim,  dark,  and  terrible  ;  the  thought  of 
a  power  unseen,  unknown,  and  possibly  hostile  and 
destructive.  Even  in  the  Jewish  mind  it  was  the 
thought  of  a  Supreme  Almighty  Monarch,  who  is 
righteous  indeed,  but  who  can  by  no  means  clear 
the  guilty.  If  this  conception  was  relieved  by 
gleams  of  the  Divine  mercy,  the  relief  was  only 
partial,  and  hardly  realized  in  the  consciousness  ; 
the  dominating  impression  was  still  that  of  the 
Sovereign,  High  and  lifted  up,  before  whom  even 


130  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

archangels  veiled  tlieir  faces,  and  who  could  not 
look  on  iniquity  with  the  least  degree  of  allowance. 
But  in  Christendom  every  little  child  is  taught  at 
its  mother's  knees  to  look  up  and  say,  "  Odr 
Father,  who  art  in  heaven,"  and  the  thought  of 
God  as  our  Father,  our  gracious,  merciful,  all-lov- 
ing Father,  who  has  proved  His  love  to  us  by  giving 
His  only  Son  to  die  for  us,  is  the  thought  of  Him 
which  is  most  spontaneous  in  every  Christian  heart. 
Glorious,  indeed,  the  message  with  which  the 
Church  of  Christ  is  charged,  and  snblime  its  mis- 
sion to  proclaim  that  message  in  every  generation 
till  the  end  of  time  for  the  salvation  of  the  world  ! 
It  would  be  this  if  the  testimony  which  the  Church 
has  to  bear  were  only  that  of  a  witness  to  past  reve- 
lations ;  but  its  function  is  far  higher,  and  charged 
with  infinitely  more  vital  power.  The  Church  is 
not  only  a  witness  for  Christ,  but  it  is,  in  a  true 
sense,  the  Body  of  Christ.  In  it  He  still  lives  in 
human  societ}'-,  and  by  its  ministrations  still  does 
His  mighty  works  among  men.  In  the  ascension 
withdrawal  of  His  visible  presence  He  gave  His 
disciples  most  explicit  assurance  of  perpetual  con- 
tinuance with  them  by  His  indwelling  Spirit — an 
assurance  demonstratively  fulfilled  by  irrefragable 
proofs,  both  visible  and  invisible.  The  religion  of 
Christ  is,  therefore,  in  the  fullest  possible  sense  of 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  131 

the  words,  a  living  religion.  His  disciples  are 
charged  not  only  with  the  commission  to  be  the 
heralds  of  it,  but  with  vital  capacity  and  consequent 
obligation  to  demonstrate  its  power  as  well  as  its 
truth  by  actually  living  it.  The  Body  of  which 
they  are  members  is  His  inspired  Body,  and  every 
member,  even  to  the  least  and  lowest,  has  life  in 
vital  communion  with  Him  tlirough  His  indwelling 
presence  and  by  the  very  breathing  of  His  Holy 
Spirit. 

Now,  what  we  especially  and  most  urgently  need 
in  this  generation  of  the  last  days  is  a  true,  living, 
and  realizing  sense  of  this  grand  Christian  privilege 
and  obligation.  We  hear  complaints  on  all  sides  of 
the  decadence  of  faith  in  our  time.  Not  always  in 
a  tone  of  complaint,  but  quite  as  often  apparently 
of  exultation,  it  is  said  that  the  historic  Christian 
theology  has  had  its  day,  and  dogmatic  faith  has 
lost  or  is  rapidly  losing  its  hold  on  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  men.  If  so,  or  so  in  very  considerable 
degree,  the  reason  is  not,  as  is  often  alleged,  in  the 
advancing  scientific  intelligence  of  this  generation. 
It  is  not  occasioned  by  new  discoveries  of  weak 
points  in  the  Christian  evidences  or  detection  of 
unscientific  flaws  in  Christian  doctrine.  It  lies 
much  nearer  home  ;  it  touches  the  very  principle  of 
our  rehgious  consciousness.     It  is  a  decadence  not 


132  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

simply  of  helief,  but  of  real  faith.  It  is  a  spiritual 
blindness  to  the  realities  of  the  spiritual  workl, 
because  of  the  fond  closeness  with  which  we  hold 
continually  before  oar  eyes  the  things  which  are 
palpable  in  the  world  of  the  present.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, in  one  of  his  Good  Words  papers  ("  good 
words"  in  more  than  one  sense),  has  called  atten- 
tion to  "the  increased  and  increasing  dominion" 
in  our  modern  life  "  of  the  things  seen  over  the 
things  unseen,"  and  our  consequent  danger,  even 
while  still  acknowledging  allegiance  to  the  tradi- 
tionary ideal,  of  becoming  the  dupes  and  slaves  of 
sheer  materialism.  "  My  twofold  proposition," 
he  says,  "  is  that  we  see  before  us  an  increased 
power  of  things  seen,  and  that  this  increased  power 
implies  a  diminishing  hold  upon  us  of  things  un- 
seen. Throughout  the  history  of  mankind,  the  in- 
visible, and  the  future  which  is  pnrt  of  the  invisi- 
ble, have  been  in  standing  competition  with  what 
may  be  termed  the  things  of  the  world.  There 
has  never  been  a  time  in  human  history  to  compare 
with  the  last  half  century  in  two  vital  respects  : 
the  multiplication  of  wealth  and  the  multiplication 
of  the  enjoyments  which  wealth  procures.  .  .  . 
Obviously,  almost  mathematically,  the  increased 
powers  of  worldly  attraction  disturb  the  balance  of 
our  condition,  imless  and  until  they  are  compen- 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  133 

sated  bj  increased  j)owers  of  unworldly  attraction 
and  elevation.  Where  are  such  compensating 
powers  to  be  had  ?  I  am  afraid  we  can  hardly  saj 
that,  in  the  spheres  now  under  view,  there  has  been 
such  a  growth  in  unworldly  motives  and  ideas  as 
to  counterveil  the  augmented  strength  of  worldly 
attachment.  And  I  apprehend  that  if  the  unseen 
world  and  the  ideas  belonging  to  it  operate  upon  us 
with  a  proportionately  diminished  force,  it  follows, 
almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  creeds  which 
belong  to  that  circle  of  associations  will  be  more 
dimly  and  therefore  more  feebly  apprehended." 
He  goes  on  to  say  that  he  has  no  fear  that  "  mate- 
rialism as  a  formulated  system,'' '^  or  philosophical 
theory  of  life,  is  or  is  likely  to  be  on  the  increase. 
"  But  the  power  of  a  silent,  una  vowed,  unconscious 
materialism  is  a  very  different  matter.  .  .  .  There 
are  in  human  nature  a  multitude  of  undeveloped 
(so  to  speak),  embryonic  forces  of  impressions  re- 
ceived from  without  and  finding  a  congenial  soil 
within,  which  never  make  their  way  to  maturity, 
or  obtain  a  definite  place  in  our  consciousness.  My 
belief  is  that  at  this  moment  these  untested,  not 
thoughts,  but  rudiments  of  thought,  are  at  work 
among  us  and  within  us  ;  and  were  they  translated 
or  expanded  into  words,  their  sense  would  be  no 
more  nor  less  than  the  old  vulgar  sense  of  those  who 


134  INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED. 

in  all  ages  have  held  that,  after  all,  this  world  is 
the  only  world  we  securely  know,  and  that  the  only 
labor  that  is  worth  laboring,  the  only  care  that  is 
worth  caring,  the  only  joy  worth  enjoying,  are  the 
labor,  the  care,  the  joy  that  begin  and  end  with  it." 
This  is  our  real  danger,  this  the  real  cause  of 
the  scepticism  that  is  perceptibly  growing  in  the 
present  age.  It  is  a  decadence,  not  of  helief  a,s  de- 
pendent on  sufficient  evidence,  but  of  faith  as  the 
realization  of  the  spiritual  and  eternal.  We  need — 
oh,  how  greatly  we  need — a  revival  of  this  faith  ! 
We  need  to  feel  that  this  is  God's  world,  in  which 
we  have  our  being,  and  that  He  is  not  a  dead  God, 
but  the  living  Ood  j  that  Pie  cares  for  and  com- 
munes with  His  creatures,  whom  He  hath  endowed 
with  spiritual  intelligence,  not  only  by  revelations 
in  the  far  distant  past,  and  by  causing  the  substance 
of  such  revelations  to  be  printed  in  a  book,  but  as 
truly  and  as  directly  now  and  here,  in  every-day 
life  and  every  possible  phase  of  present  experience. 
We  need  a  revival  of  religion  in  accordance  with 
the  old  definition,  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of 
man.  Without  this,  in  vain  is  all  our  zeal  for  or- 
thodox expressions,  and  to  no  purpose  our  scrupu- 
lous adherence  to  the  ritual  regulations  of  the 
Church  or  insistence  upon  implicit  belief  in  the 
inspired  infallibility  of  the  Book.     If  there  be  in 


INSPIRATION  A  PRESENT  NEED.  135 

our  faith  nothing  more  than  this,  it  is  a  dead  faith, 
and  our  God  is  a  fetich.  The  true  God  is  the  liv- 
ing God,  and  the  onlj  true  faith  is  that  which  has 
its  realizing  consciousness  in  living  communion 
with  Him,  with  Him  in  adoring  assimilation  to  the 
pure  perfection  of  His  righteousness,  and  in  grate- 
ful and  loving  admiration  of  the  fall  graciousness 
of  His  infinite  love.  This,  and  nothing  short  of 
this,  is  truly  to  know  God  and  to  have  fellowship 
with  His  Son,  Jesus  Christ. 


""Tfir: 


